


Rebel Rebel

by Adolphus Longestaffe (adolphus_longestaffe), tinyfiestyrosiekitten



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Addiction, Age Difference, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Barebacking, Daddy Kink, Depression, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Implied/Referenced Sexual Assault, M/M, NYPD detective Jack, Panic Attacks, References to suicidal ideation, Rough Sex, frank references to prostitution, mild violence, punk rocker Gabe, references to human trafficking/slavery/kidnapping
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-20
Updated: 2018-06-20
Packaged: 2019-05-25 21:57:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 40,555
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14986463
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/adolphus_longestaffe/pseuds/Adolphus%20Longestaffe, https://archiveofourown.org/users/tinyfiestyrosiekitten/pseuds/tinyfiestyrosiekitten
Summary: Jack Morrison is an NYPD Vice detective, working on a case that could bring down a powerful international businessman and a lot of dirty cops. His chief lead in the investigation is Gabriel Reyes, a 23-year-old punk-rocker with a foul mouth and some very dangerous secrets.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> RAINN (Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network) is the nation's largest anti-sexual violence organization. RAINN operates the National Sexual Assault Hotline and the DoD Safe Helpline for the Department of Defense. RAINN also carries out programs to prevent sexual violence, help survivors, and ensure that perpetrators are brought to justice. Please visit their website here: https://www.rainn.org
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> The Polaris Project is a U.S. based anti-human-trafficking organization that focuses on trauma-aware support and maintains a national human trafficking hotline. Please visit their website here: https://polarisproject.org
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> _________________________________________________________________

Detective Jack Morrison is no stranger to this part of town. It’s where half his cases start or end. Runaways, streetwalkers, crackheads, mentally-ill homeless—whatever detritus society chooses to ignore—they all wind up swept under this particular rug. He passes a couple of whores as he turns down the alley. Doesn’t hassle them. That’s not his job. He wishes the black eye on one of the girls wasn’t quite so visible, though. Poor kid.

Gabriel sucks on his menthol as he slumps on the brick outside one of the underground clubs that Max had dragged them to. A dive-bar for real, but they were pretty receptive to the music. He’s still hopped up on his set and the alcohol. Sung out and a little drunk, high on the thrill of the crowd thrashing along with his singing, beads of sweat cooling on his skin in the night air as he hums around the filter and lets his head thump against the brick.

He’s not expecting some officer buzzkill to come slogging down the alley, though. All he can see at this distance is silver-white hair. The baggy trench coat the cop is wearing against the fall chill doesn’t reveal much else. It’s in the walk. Plainclothes, but that weary, determined stalk may as well be a blue uniform. He texts Max discreetly. Uncaring, because its not illegal to let him know its time to “head home.” 

As he approaches the back door of the grimy little dance club, he sees a rangy punk kid leaning on the wall, smoking a cigarette and looking tough. Sees him slip out his phone and tap a hasty text, then hide it again. Doesn’t give a shit. Until he realizes who it is. It’s Gabriel Reyes, for sure. Just…taller and more muscular than the old photos Jack has seen. Kid must’ve filled out in the seven years since he was a juvenile offender. He’s twenty-three now, after all. And a lot prettier than his mugshot from his recent arrest, too. He’s got on a shitload of black eyeliner, which looks far too good to be reasonable, and there are blue streaks in his curly brown-black hair. Those are new.

Jack gets within a couple feet and stops, eyeing him up and down. Gabriel sucks harder on his cigarette and pushes off from the wall, all indolent grace and attitude.

“Well, hello there, old man,” he rasps in a smoky, singing-hoarse voice. “Whatcha doing trudging around here at this time of night?”

“This time of night, huh?” Jack says, gravelly voice cool and level. “Pretty rough neighborhood for a kid your age to be loitering in the street by himself. Unless you’re out here for another reason.”

Gabriel finishes his cigarette carefully. Cupping his palms around the ember—hot-boxing it, really—before he discards the stub. Grinding it under his boot as he exhales a thick plume of white at the older man.

“I’unno…I’m fit. I live here. My sort of neighborhood. Really friendly. To _locals_.” Not bothering to hide the fact that this man isn’t counted among them. Cocking his hips, voice dripping into a husky croon. “You wanna chat with a local, there’s plenty of lonely girls out here. Maybe you’ll find them better company.”

He’s mocking him. Flicking purple painted nails as he fishes out his box of smokes again. Counting seconds, pulling out another cigarette, debating…how long can he distract him? Long enough to get the worst vacated, he figures. They’re used to a scramble.

Jack chuckles. Looks him up and down again. Steps closer. Reyes doesn’t step back. Doesn’t even look concerned. Ballsy little fucker. Jack respects him for that, at least.

“That what you’re doing out here? Hustling?” Jack’s ice-blue eyes catch the kid’s big brown ones and hold them. “Maybe I should take you in.”

He takes another step. This time Reyes backs up. Not because he’s scared. Just to lean languidly on the wall. Drop his head to the side and smirk those pouting lips, covered in a slick of blue gloss. Jack closes the distance. Puts his hand on the wall next to the boy’s head.

Gabriel sucks slower, nose flaring as smoke curls acid-dark from his nostrils. A little party trick he’s learned. The barbells in his lip cradle the cigarette between them. Points wicked and discrete as he coos around his smoke, “Hustle? Me? Nah, old man. I’m not looking to be bought and paid for. I do love company though.”

Its not illegal to take someone home for fun, after all. Only if they’re looking for _compensated_ dating. Heh. But a girl (and a boy) have to make a buck to eat. He enjoys getting herded up against the brick like this, though.

“You looking to take me in for fun or profit, or you going to flash that badge you got stuffed in one of those pockets.” Winking at him slowly, eyes going hazy sweet as he purrs, “Maybe I should pat _you_ down.”

Wary of a possible sudden kick to the groin or other dirty trick, Jack places one foot between the boy’s booted feet. He puts his other hand on the wall, boxing the kid in, invading his space. He smells like mint and tobacco smoke and something else. Vanilla or honey…something warm.

“Is that it, then?” Jack drops into a growl, using that deep voice to its best effect. “You’re bait. Here to distract me till your friends get away? Joke’s on you then, Reyes. I’m here for you.”

Goddamn he sounds sexy all husky like that. Gabriel isn’t entirely immune, heat dripping down his spine, sweet and clinging. Cock starting to harden in his leather pants, tight tank top under the leather coat rasping over his nipples as he moves to tap his purple nails on his cigarette.

“Oh, yeah? Well, you got me don’t you handsome?” Gabriel slowly shifts. Propping a boot on the wall. Casual, calm. Blows smoke directly into his face. “C’mon, what the fuck are you gonna try booking me on this time? I’m not loitering any place illegal and I’m not peddling my ass.”

He sneaks a hand slowly under the trench coat over the cop’s hip. Quick as a whip, Jack grabs his wrist and pins it to the wall above his head, bringing his knee up between his legs to hold him still.

“Cute. This ain’t my first rodeo, sweetheart. You’re not the first punk who’s tried to grab my gun. What do you have on you? Knife? Boy, I hope it’s not a firearm.” He reaches into the boy’s leather coat. “Butterfly knife. Pair of brass knuckles too,” he says, tossing the things onto the concrete a few feet away. “You looking for a fight?”

Gabriel rolls his eyes and scoffs. “Okay, okay. I wasn’t looking to cop a piece. Except, you know…cop a piece of your ass maybe.”

He gives a wicked smirk, thrusting his hips forward lewdly, letting his coat slip carelessly down, exposing more of his glitter-dusted chest and shoulders. Pants riding low on razor-sharp hips, doe dark eyes watching him excitedly.

“You always expect a fight and be happy when you don’t have to get into one. Just…wise, right officer?” He blows the cop a kiss, keeping his wrist still. Debating kicking up a fuss for the thrill. But he’s all warmed up now…why not behave for a bit?

This is stupid. This is so stupid. Jack doesn’t do this. Doesn’t get taken in by a pretty face. Or big, long-lashed brown eyes or pouting lips, alluring regardless of their slick of blue paint. But there’s something wild and lit-up in this kid. Something that brings Jack’s old days rushing back in a flood, and suddenly he’s there behind a grimy club after a punk-rock show, high on the noise and heat and press of bodies, dragged out back by some other gorgeous child to dry-hump each other dizzy before the show ended and people came flooding out. Jesus, he’d have killed to have someone like this back then. He’s fighting the good fight and losing fast. The kid must sense it on him, because he gives a lascivious twist of his hips, grinding down on Jack’s thigh.

“Cut…fuck. Cut that shit out,” Jack growls, voice slurred and thick with lust, eyes wandering down to those low-slung leather pants. “You don’t know what I’d _do_ to you.”

Oh, now that’s a look on him. Sexy. Older guys, they know all sorts of tricks, too. The good ones do, at least. If Gabriel can get off and make the cop a little dirtier? Well. Fuck the goddamn police, right? Fuck them all night long. Scream until you break the rafters.

“I can think of a few things…I can think of a lot of things you could do to me. Things I’d _love_ to let you do to me.” Gabriel’s thighs flex around the leg keeping him trapped, grinding against it harder, giving a soft, sultry moan. “Lemme blow your mind, old man.”

Jack returns to himself a little. Regains temporary grasp on the thread of his sanity. Reyes is trying to make it look like manipulation. Pretending this is all a game. But his voice is a little too breathy and manic. Too much urgency in that thrusting hip. His fingers clench and unclench in little twitching movements that Jack can feel where he’s squeezing the tendons of his wrist. Time to call his bluff.

Jack’s firm lips curl at one corner. “You want to blow my mind, sweetheart? Show me.”

He drags the kid into the darker shadow just out of the street lamp, a little alcove where the emergency exit is. He pushes him hard against the wall, pinning him with his body, pressing their cocks against each other through their pants. He takes the kid’s smooth jaw in his hand and runs his thumb across his bottom lip, smearing the glittery blue gloss onto his chin.

“Blow my mind, baby,” he rasps, lips just brushing the row of steel studs in the boy’s ear. “Show daddy what you can do with that pretty mouth.”

_Oh._

Well. Now that just ain’t fucking fair, is it?

Gabriel’s cock goes from ready to rock hard and dripping in seconds flat. Dizzy, briefly, from the rush of blood as he sways into the too-hot-for-his-own-good asshole, hooking a leg around the cop’s as he arches. Grinding roughly into him as he turns his head to bite at his thumb. Sucking on it, tongue darting out to drag over the pad and around the side of the digit. Sucking like it’s a toy. Like it’s a treat. Like he wants to do something much filthier. His hands glide down the cop’s sides and grab at his ass through his pants, before raking his nails over his thighs to paw at his hips. Gasping softly when he releases the calloused digit from between his teeth. He bites at the edge of the cop’s square jaw, planting glittering blue-painted kisses as he discards his coat on the pavement. Baring dark skin and gold body-glitter and droplets of sweat starting to streak like comet tails down his body.

“Then daddy better let me get on my knees so I can pay out like a good little boy, huh?” he moans eagerly into the edge of his ear. “Let me make daddy feel _so good_.”

That sweet, smoky voice crawls up Jack’s spine and coils around the base of his skull. He feels drunk. Overheated. Can’t stop his fingers twining into those blue and black curls, softer than the softest down. Almost swaying as he yanks Gabriel’s head back and licks a slow stripe over his velvety, dusky-brown throat, tasting honey and smoke and salty sweat before he bites into it, just hard enough to make the kid’s breath hitch.

“Fuck,” he breathes into his skin. “You taste…so fucking good.”

His big, calloused hand is already sliding up beneath the tight tank-top, tugging and twisting the barbell in his pebble-hard nipple as he bites a bruise into his other pectoral muscle. Gabriel is grinding into him, hands under his coat, fingernails digging into his sides like he’s trying to tear through his shirt. Jack’s hand tightens into a fist in the silky curls and he pushes him to his knees.

“That what you want?” he growls, holding him fast by his hair. “You want to suck daddy’s cock?”

“You—ah! fuckin…you told me to show you what I could do with my mouth,” Gabriel pants, tongue flicking out.

The gleaming-gold top of the barbell in his tongue glitters in the faint, red light of the neon sign overhead, promising a night of sin, glorious and filthy, hot and debauched…all for the price of one detective’s soul. Dark eyes glowing with the same hellish hue as he spreads his knees and rolls his hips, humping against nothing, just to show the way his cock tents his leather pants. His hands hook in belt loops and find the zipper of the cop’s fly, ruining the button with a wrench as he laughs gutturally. He almost giggles, drunk on the way his head is craned back, neck hurting with the strain, Adam’s apple bobbing dramatically as he swallows.

“Come on, daddy, don’t play fucking coy. You wanna fuck my mouth, right? Want to feel me gag on your thick dick?” He flashes his piercing again, curling his tongue between the pointed rings on his lip. “Slip it right over my spikes here. Lemme show you a thing or two a punk can do that those good boys and girls can’t.”

Jack’s clenched fist loosens and becomes a petting stroke through silky curls, as the boy muzzles up against his crotch, teeth grazing over the rigid shaft of his cock, tormenting him till he’s panting, dizzy, beyond the point of reason. His cock is almost painfully hard, drooling in his underwear and straining against the tight fabric. He doesn’t just want the kid to blow him, he wants to watch that taut, round ass bouncing on his dick, wants to fuck him so hard he _howls_. He has lost this contest of wills so soundly that he’s staggered. One pretty little punk-rocker blithely laying waste to his years of honest service and scrupulous integrity.

“Suck my cock,” he snarls irritably. “Shut the fuck up and do it, before I take you somewhere and fuck the sass out of you.”

“Cranky, aren’t you daddy?” Gabriel pretends to pout, but he doesn’t argue.

He yanks down the soaked briefs to let the detective’s cock bob free. Barely pausing to admire the swollen, ruddy head before he’s wrapping his painted lips around it. Settling it neatly between his piercings and letting the barbell in his tongue rake over the dripping slit before he dips his head roughly. Sucking slick and eager, tongue grazing along the sides of the shaft as he twists his head and lets the dulled little tips on his rings lightly scrape the pulsing dick buried in his mouth.

Before the asshole can complain, though, he gets to business. Burying his nose in silver curls and sucking like he owns it. Throat opening around him with each swallow, clenching wetly around the head. Barely pulling off before he’s forcing it right back in to the base of the shaft. Hands curled tight over strong hips as he moans against him. Letting him feel how he swallows, fucked up on how good it is to deep-throat something so girthy.

The head of Jack’s cock slides into the kid’s mouth like it’s entering the gates of hell. _Abandon all hope_ … He hisses at the metal points grazing his shaft, because it feels so goddamned good. The kid’s tongue works over him, coiling and twisting like a hot snake, punctuated by the hardness of the steel ball on that barbell against the sensitive skin.

His knees almost buckle as the kid fucking deep-throats him right there in the alley. No gag, no hesitation, just sucks him into that hot little mouth and swallows like he’s enjoying it. And he fucking is, goddamn it. Sucking and licking and humming on Jack’s aching cock like it’s a piece of candy. Eyes pitch-dark and heavy-lidded in the red neon light. A pretty image on his knees.

“Jesus fuck—” Jack gasps, barely coherent, “—so good…so good for daddy. Just like that… _fuck_! I’m gonna come soon, baby. Where do you want it?”

Gabriel is aching. He fumbles with his buttons, letting his cock hang free in the cool air to buy himself some time, as the old man thrusts right up against his throat. The big hands still tangled but not pulling at his dyed curls. Bracing one palm against his thigh. Pushing himself off with a lewdly slick little pop.

Most of his lipstick rubbed off as he gasps, “Better let me swallow. I’d hate to make a mess, daddy.”

Stupid, so fucking stupid. He doesn’t know what the detective sticks his dick in, but he’s so far gone on it, he’s let his head get away from him. Sealing his lips around the base and swallowing over and over. Digging his nails into the cop’s ass and yanking him that much closer. Demanding and hungry as he tries every twist of his tongue, lips, and even a tiny tap of his teeth to make the cop lose himself.

Jack’s mouth actually waters as the kid gets out his big, pierced cock, gorgeous and glittering with the steel barbells down the shaft and the ring in the leaking head. If this little beauty wants to swallow his come, Jack has no problem with that. Maybe he’ll return the favor after Reyes has finished doing his good deed for an old former punk-rocker turned worn-out cop.

He leans on the wall with one hand and wraps the other around the back of the curly-dark head, pushing it down onto his cock as he thrusts hard and fast, scraping over metal studs, fucking into his throat like he’s lost his mind. The aching, throbbing pressure builds to an agonizing point. Jack plunges his cock in all the way to the base and holds it there, choking the kid on it as it convulses violently, spewing in hot bursts down his tight, wet throat.

“Fuck!” Jack groans, almost doubled over, clutching the boy’s curly head as he rides out the spasms. “You made me come—so fucking hard, holy fuck.”

Gabriel drops a hand to grind it against the base of the cop’s dick. Actually choking for a moment when the already-thick cock pulses, come coating his throat before he gets a handle on himself and swallows in long, hard sucks. Trapped, caught by the older man, the salt-musk of him and the sour-salt taste of his seed on the back of his tongue. Raking his nails down his thigh as tears smear his mascara.

His hand curls around the base of his own cock, stroking once, twice—his seed splatters across the pavement as the cop rides out his own release in his throat. The praise is enough to get him off, sadly enough. Too used to finishing himself to bother being patient for a handout that’s not coming. Nostrils flaring as he lets the older man to enjoy his high. Not in a hurry to make him slip this perfect cock out of his mouth.

“You came, baby,” Jack pants, rough voice smoothed with post-climax euphoria. “That’s so hot, Christ.”

He eases his cock out of the boy’s mouth, shivering as cold night air washes over it. He tucks it back into his underwear, not bothering with his fly yet as he pulls the kid to his feet and presses his warm body against him under his long jacket. Reyes seems a little stunned by the gesture, which makes Jack laugh softly. He tucks the kid’s dick into his leather pants and carefully zips up his fly for him.

He looks down into Gabriel’s beautifully-wrecked, mascara-streaked face, and their eyes meet. Before the little punk can open his mouth again and ruin the moment, Jack’s mouth is pressed against it, parting his lips and sliding his tongue inside. He shudders and gives a low hum of pleasure to taste his own salty come on that amazingly filthy tongue.

“Good boy,” he hums, as he pulls back. “Very good boy. Didn’t spill a drop, did you.”

Gabriel is usually left on his knees to clean up and fix up, get himself sorted, wind down off his high. Instead, he finds warm arms pulling him past the edges of the worn, smoky, musky coat. Tucked up against a broad chest before chapped lips find his mouth and refuse to let him get a word in edgewise. Sinking into the wall as a big, hard body presses him back against it. Tongue chasing his, chasing his taste, before he’s left gasping softly and clutching at the cop.

How the fuck did the old man turn the tables like this?

Blinking slowly with a low whine in his throat, “Ngh…ah. N—no, daddy. Didn’t want to waste any of it. Too good for that.”

And it was. Oh, it was. Throat sore and his voice wrecked as he talks, making him squirm into the brick, cock giving a slight twitch at the aching reminder. Then the cop just lets him go. Tosses him one more lingering glance with those ice-blue eyes, and walks away, vanishing into the night and leaving a dumbfounded, fucked-out punk-rocker to collect his jacket and weapons from the cold pavement and slink back to the shitty apartment he refuses to call home.


	2. Chapter 2

Gabriel hasn’t seen his cop in a while.

_His._

Like he actually has any claim on the older man who had whirled into his life so abruptly—like the best sort of guitar solo, hard and heavy and throbbing deep into your bones—before he wisped out again, as immaterial as cigarette smoke. Just as bitter to the taste, once the menthol was gone from the filter. Worn out and smoky and addictive like one, too, leaving him with a vague craving and a jittery scowl. Shoulders hunching a bit, walking in the dark, aimless as always. No club to be had today. There’d been a little unrest recently and they weren’t stupid. Punks but not idiots; laying low while the cops tore up their favorite hangouts and hideaways.

It’s getting cold as the fall lengthens, and he’s glad for the hoodie under his leather jacket, threaded with safety pins and patches. He trudges along, music in his ears, smoke trailing from under his hood, well-prepared to smoke the full pack on his wandering walk. Blue lipstick stains on the cigarette filters he leaves trailing behind him like breadcrumbs.

Jack has been tormenting himself about Reyes since that night. When he fucked up and let him suck him off outside the club. At first, he couldn’t stop thinking about how stupid it was. Then he just couldn’t stop thinking about it. Thinking about that smoky voice and that filthy, pouting mouth. How every curve and angle of the kid is a work of art.

Meanwhile, he’s been staking out the neighborhood. Keeping an eye on things without being seen. It’s his job. They need to know where Reyes goes and who he talks to. So far, it’s nowhere and no one. The scumbags who’ve got their hooks in him must be out of town. But the kid walks. Long, solitary walks at night, like he’s looking for something and isn’t finding it. Tonight, he’ll find Jack.

The whole neighborhood is being patrolled for anyone involved in a certain little protest-turned-riot that had made the local news, and the kid is too important to let him get arrested by another precinct and fuck up the case Jack has been working on for months. He’s fought his Captain tooth and nail to keep the kid out of it, but things are too hot now, and she was never too keen on the idea that their chief lead might up and vanish because Jack is trying to shield him from prosecution. Finally, she’d given Jack an ultimatum. It’s this or jail. And she knows as well as he does that if the kid goes to jail now, he’ll never come out. So, he has to bring him in, no matter how badly he’s fucked it up.

He’s waiting, leaning on the hood of his beat-up Cadillac, when Reyes slinks around the corner and enters the alley, all hoodie and attitude. He stops and yanks out an earbud when he sees Jack. He doesn’t come closer, though.

“I’m not here to hassle you,” Jack says gruffly. “I just want to talk. Come here. Talk to me a minute, ok?”

It’s a lie and his stomach turns as he says it, but he almost believes he can still do this the right way. Almost believes he hasn’t been jerking off in a cold sweat every night, thinking about that body and that impossible mouth. Nevermind the fact that he’s half-hard already, just seeing the kid standing there, looking like he’s deciding whether or not to run.

Gabriel stops and scuffs his shoes on the pavement a few feet away from the car. Staring at him warily, even as his cock stiffens in his leather pants.

_Talk to me a minute._

Like the cop hadn’t had him on his knees swallowing his dick a few weeks ago. He should turn around and walk away. But traitorous feet carry him onward, hands still in his pockets, music blaring from the one earbud. Something rich and angry and loud with a harsh beat.

“Talk? Alright…talk then, old man. Whatcha doing out here again? Ain’t it past your bedtime?”

He sucks on his cigarette a little harder, glossed lips gleaming in the red ember. Inching in that much closer. Side-eyeing the cop from the protective edges of his hood before he’s stubbing out the cigarette. Like a fallen star dropped to earth, bright and gone in mere seconds.

“So…what are you lookin’ for? If it ain’t to ‘hassle’ me, you aren’t looking to book. And all I’m doin’ is walking, old man. Nothing to see here.” He spreads an arm open to the near-silent neighborhood. “Especially with your buddies rattling the place apart. We’re all indoors like good little girls n’ boys.”

“My _buddies_ ,” Jack says, putting sneering emphasis on the word, “are rattling the place apart because your buddies started a fucking riot. Lot of property got destroyed, and do you know whose it was? It wasn’t 'the Man’s' homes and businesses that got trashed, it was your own. Regular people like you, in your own neighborhood. So spare me the revolution bullshit.”

He wants so badly to make this kid understand they’re on the same side (as far as wanting the cops _and_ the kingpins out of this neighborhood), but he can’t. The kid would never believe him, and he could blow the whole investigation. Better to try another approach.

“All the good boys and girls are indoors,” he says, hoarse and low. He eyes him up and down. Slowly. Letting him see it. “But you’re not.”

“That’s right. I’m still up and about. Walking around.” An easy rolling shrug, clicking his tongue. Skin prickling under the raking gaze. Eyeing the cop back as he shakes another cigarette out of the box and lights it. He rocks back on his heels, slumping, cocking his hips with a sultry purr. “What can I say? I get so…restless.”

He tries not to think of the growled praise that makes him hungry even now, but he can still fucking taste him. Remember how wide his dick cracked his jaw as he sucked him off. How responsive he was…

Jack sighs. “You’re not one of the good boys and girls, Reyes. That’s what I meant. Jesus, it’s like you’re _trying_ not to hear what I’m saying.”

Gabriel almost snarks back about the last time they met the officer was calling him all sorts of good boy, but he doesn’t want him to think he’s hooked up on him or anything. His gaze darts over him and away, tossing his head indignantly.

“Don’t get offended sweetheart,” Jack smirks. “I wouldn’t like you if you were a good boy. Not that kind, anyway. I’m here because I owe you a favor, so listen up. Two witnesses say they had eyes on you at that riot. There are uniforms scouring this area and if they catch you out, they’re gonna take you in. You need to get off the street for a couple of days. You have somewhere to go?”

Gabriel wavers. The idea of clogging up Max’s already-packed apartment makes him feel sick. A hot ball of anger rises in his throat and chokes him. Fuck this cop and his favors. He thinks he can come down his throat one time in an alley and now they’re friends or some shit? These pigs are all the fucking same.

He glares at him. “I got a place I hang nearby. The fuck do you care, anyway?”

Should be empty. A half-crumbling apartment frequented by local punks and ne’er-do-wells. But cops usually let it be. No money in it, since none of the dealers or whores used it. It worked as a crash pad and an impromptu band venue when everything else was jammed up.

“Yeah, I know about your little secret hideout,” Jack says. “So do the other cops. Let me take you somewhere safe.”

Gabriel balks, eyes going wide. Jumpy, like he’s about to bolt. “No. I’m not fucking going anywhere with you. You think I’m a fucking idiot?”

It’s understandable. If their positions had been reversed, Jack wouldn’t have gone with an old cop either. But he’s struggling with himself at the moment, trying to justify what he’s doing to the kid, and this makes him irritable.

“Fuck’s sake, Reyes,” he says sharply. “If I wanted to arrest you, I could’ve done it ten times. The safest place for you in the city right now is with me.”

Gabriel sits his ass down right there on the sidewalk and stares defiantly up at him. Jack steps over and snatches the cigarette from his mouth. He can taste the minty lip gloss on the filter as he takes a long, slow drag. He blows a lazy smoke ring into the air and exhales the rest in a thick, blue-white cloud under the flickering street lamp.

“You do a lot of stupid shit, you know that?” he says, handing the cigarette back. “Smoking is bad for you.”

“Smoking is the least dangerous stupid shit I do, officer Morrison.”

Gabriel takes a drag of the menthol and blows it at him. Scowling as he fishes a tube of glossy blue lipstick from his inner coat. He’s still got his knife and knuckle dusters, in case the old man gets insistent. For now, he uncaps the gold tube, juggling his cigarette to reapply the color.

“That’s Detective Morrison, pendejo,” Jack says. “You want to be snarky, bother to get your shit right. Come on. You can finish slutting up your makeup in the car.”

“What is with you? Sexual freedom is the right of an of-age individual. Pursuit of happiness. Just because I don’t have a nightstick lodged up my ass like you do is no need for fucking name calling _Detective_ Morrison.” He emphasizes it mockingly. Lips curled in a Cupid’s bow kiss around the filter of his cigarette as he flips him off.

Jack smiles. Grabs the little punk and hauls him to his feet by the collar of his leather jacket. He reaches inside and pulls out the cigarettes, lighter, knife, brass knuckles, and lipstick.

“You can have these back when you’ve learned some fucking manners,” he says, dropping them into his coat pocket. “You’re a criminal, Reyes. The only reason you’re on the outside is because I say you can be, for now. You don’t have any rights. Unless you want to go directly to prison, you’ll do as you’re told. Now take your ass to the fucking car.”

Gabriel hisses as he’s dragged up. The _good_ detective yanking on bruises from the riot. He shakes his grip loose, snarling.

“Give me back my shit! You don’t get to treat me this way. Unless I’m in a jail cell the only person that owns me is me.” He steps into his space, bristling like a rabid animal before thinking twice and beating a retreat, for now. Jack is stronger and it rankles. “What the fuck ever, though. Power-tripping asshole.”

Like he even cares. Fucker. He slams the unmarked car’s door. Slumping in the seat and scowling at his knees. Jack smirks until the kid throws himself into the front seat and bangs the door shut. Then his expression turns serious. He passes his hand over his scarred brow.

This fucking little punk. He’s a lost cause, Jack. You can’t save this one. Let him go.

_There’s no such thing as a lost cause._

His chest constricts with a pang of genuine concern and sympathy for the boy. Obviously abused. No family. He’d be on the street if he weren’t living in that shithole with that lowlife. He doesn’t have track marks at least. No visible ones. Jack will find out for sure later. He hardens his expression back into a sardonic smirk before he joins the kid in the car.

“Put on your fucking seatbelt,” he growls, as he turns the engine over. “We’ve got a long drive.”

Gabriel gives him a vicious side-eye, overexaggerating as he yanks the seat belt up and over with a sharp decisive click. Kicking up one booted heel onto the dash, slumping even further. Huddling into his leather coat which looks too big on his lank but muscular frame. He stares out the car window in sullen silence. Pissed and jittery to have his shit stolen, especially his weapons. Though he’ll be dying for his cigarettes soon.

“So, where the fuck are we going?” Finally breaking his silence as the city glides past.

“Home,” Jack says gruffly. “You’ve had enough fun for one night.”

Reyes opens his mouth to say something, but apparently thinks the better of it, contenting himself to sulk and scuff up the dashboard of Jack’s old Cadillac. Joke’s on him. Jack doesn’t give a shit about this car. He only uses it for work, anyway. The kid gets more fidgety and anxious as they pass out of the main city drag and pull onto the freeway. Jack tosses him his cigarettes and lighter.

“Go ahead,” he says. “You’re spinning out. You need it.”

Within about twenty minutes, they exit the freeway and cruise through a quiet, pretty little suburban neighborhood. As Jack turns the car into the driveway of a two-story bungalow, the kid goes ashy grey and looks absolutely terrified.

“It’s just a house,” Jack says flatly. “Don’t fucking flip out. No one lives here but me.”

Gabriel’s got enough manners to suck on the cigarette unlit until the car stops. Flinging himself out of it and eyeing the cute little two-story like it’s a trap. No way officer—pardon—Detective Morrison lives alone. Lighting up his cancer stick to puff on it nervously, hunching in his coat further. The entire neighborhood makes him feel uneasy and out of place. Was this some sick joke?

Smoke wreathes his curls as he skulks by the side of the house, hissing softly, “The fuck you bring me here for? One of your cop buddies is gonna see me and take me in for a robbery I didn’t commit, they see me hanging around here.”

“Yeah?” Jack snorts. “Well, maybe they’ll shoot you and get you out of my fucking hair. Inside. Go.”

He herds him toward the front door and holds him by the scruff of his neck while he unlocks it. He’s not in the mood to chase down a runaway punk tonight. He shoves him inside and locks the padlock, which requires a key from the inside, too. Old habits die hard. He flips on some lights and leads the boy into the kitchen, where he makes him sit down at the dining table while he goes to the sink and fills a mug halfway with tap water.

“Don’t drink that. It’s for snuffing your cigarettes. You hungry?”

Gabriel sucks on the filter harder. Fucking stomach twists with a low snarl like there’s something living in it. Making him scowl at his abdomen. He curls into himself, hooking his boots on the rung of the chair, his butt going into the water as he rasps, “No.”

It’s…clean. Sure, he keeps tidy as he can, but this feels almost regulation straight. Feels like it’s baited. He wants to stay. But good guys like Morrison don’t keep people like Gabriel around for long.

“Look, I don’t want to be indebted to you because of some weird old-man guilt. You didn’t even fuck me. I’ll keep my mouth shut and you can let me go, already. Deal?”

Jack laughs out loud, shrugging off his trench coat.

“Reyes, you could go tell the whole fucking department I fucked you, for all I care. No one would believe a word you had to say. You’ve got a rap-sheet three miles long, starting when you were sixteen. Two of those charges were assaults on police officers. You think I don’t know all about you?” He hangs the coat from a hook by the kitchen door (also keyed on both sides) and rolls up his sleeves. “I don’t give a shit if you eat or not, but I’m hungry, so you can sit there and watch me if you like.”

He retrieves a big block of cheddar cheese from the fridge, then grabs a loaf of pillowy, white bread and the butter dish. He sets a cast-iron pan on the stove, switches on the burner, and begins to butter four slices of bread while it heats. He sees the kid watching, but he ignores him. He cuts thick slices of cheddar, layers them with the bread, and sets the two sandwiches in the pan.

While they are browning and the cheese is melting, he pours a big glass of grape juice and sets it in front of Reyes. When the sandwiches are ready, he puts both on one plate, slices them diagonally, and sits down across from him. He takes one triangle and bites into it, pushing the plate almost to the center of the table.

Gabriel tries to ignore it all…but the smell of butter fat on the soft rich bread and the scent of melted cheese. God, it almost gives him a headache from how good it smells. Orange strands puddling on the plate once the brown toasted bread is cut in half. He swallows a mouthful of saliva, staring at the plate from the corner of his eye. He loses the fight. Snatches up a triangle, biting into the crisp crust and cheddar. Angry for reasons he can’t understand as he swallows thickly.

He glowers at the plate and hisses, “You don’t know me. That’s all you people do. The cops started that fight.”

Jack suppresses a sigh of relief. At least the kid is eating. Makes drugs less likely. He’ll still have to check, though. Like a vet taking in a feral street dog.

“Oh yeah?” he says. “You’re telling me two police officers started a fight with you. Pardon me if I’m a bit dubious. I’ve only heard that one a thousand times.”

His tone is acerbic, but he’s hoping to bait the kid into telling him what happened. He’d never get the straight story if he asked in earnest, but if he challenges him, he might blurt it out from defensiveness.

Gabriel tears into his sandwich triangle, ripping it apart with a single-minded viciousness. He chews it with a scowl before he shoves the plate back toward the cop.

“Yeah, I bet you’ve heard of a thousand times before. No one listens to the kid with a rap sheet a mile long. So what, the cops harass someone? So what, the cops are shoving people around? So what if they throw the first punch.” He snarls as he stares at the glass of juice. “So I beat a few fucking assholes. I get slammed with assault of out-of-clothes officers, like they matter more than anyone else.”

Jack blinks. This is the first he’s heard of the officers having been out of uniform. Officers Callahan and Mahoney are beat cops. They’d have had no reason to be in plainclothes on duty. So, either they were off-duty, out of uniform, or the kid is lying. He’s pretty sure it’s not the third option. Whatever Reyes is, he’s not a liar.

He pushes harder. “Listen, Reyes, you better be careful with that shit. It sounds like you’re accusing officers of the law of assault, because you were so fucked up you couldn’t tell a blue uniform from street clothes. How do you even know who threw the first punch?”

“Yeah, well _fuck_  you, too!” Gabriel grabs the glass, flexing like he’s debating throwing it at Morrison. And he is, he really is as the anger bubbles up his throat with an iron taste like blood. Instead he slams the chair back and stomps to the sink, depositing the glass into the basin as he snaps over his shoulder, “It’s all the same between pigs. In uniform, out of uniform. A couple poor girls get mauled, and that never ends up in the news. Oh no, its the fact one dark-skinned punk kid decides to thug it up attacking a couple cops who’re ‘working’ to keep people safe.” His eyes narrow. “I’m sure Angie and Roberta felt real safe with those cops’ hands down their shorts while they were crying in that alley.”

He stalks toward what looked like a living room, livid just remembering that night. Remembering how he started all this crap. Broken noses and broken fingers before he’s hunted down and thrown in a cell. Slapped with assault and obstruction of justice.

Jack sits calmly at the table, expressionless, as the kid storms off into the living room like a teenager who’s mad at dad. He’d watched him put his glass in the sink and his heart had almost broken with the inherent, untaught sweetness of the gesture. But he’s choking on red-hot rage at the moment, and can’t trust his voice to be steady enough to thank him. If Jack hates anything more than corrupt cops, it’s rapists. And a cop using his uniform to sexually abuse teenaged girls, whores or not, tilts him dangerously toward an unreasonable reaction. Callahan and Mahoney have been under investigation twice by Internal Affairs. Both times, witnesses reversed their statements to the DA, or refused to testify. Their precinct had let them off with paid suspension in both cases.  

His stomach turns. He has to ask Reyes to testify, but that’ll be signing his death-warrant. He washes the plate and cup while he struggles to get his emotions under control. Once he’s calm, he goes to the living room and finds Reyes flung across the couch, boots on the floor beside it. His leather coat is on the back of a chair and he has his hoodie folded under his cheek. His tattered mesh tank top doesn’t hide much of his body. Scrapes and bruises are scattered over his rangy, wolf-like muscles, the product of a vigorous lifestyle and not always getting enough to eat.

“Come on,” Jack says wearily, giving the boy a shake. “You’re not sleeping on the couch. And you still need a shower.”

Gabriel swats at his hand, twisting onto his side to face the back cushions. His scowl deepens under the start of a five o’clock shadow on his angled cheeks. Dark eyes trying determinedly to look anywhere but at Jack. He hates he lost his temper, that the detective can mock him with paradise lost over two club bunnies and a pair of dirty cops.

He hunkers, curling a bit. “You don’t care. Why bother? I’m a charity case to you. Something to polish up and forget about.”

“Don’t fucking put your shit on me,” Jack snaps, blue eyes sparking. “You can hate yourself and call yourself a charity case till you’re blue in the face, but you don’t know dick about me either, so watch your fucking mouth.”

In the dim moonlight coming from the windows, sprawled on the couch like this, the kid looks so much like him. So much like…he derails this train of thought before it has a chance to become a full-on wreck, swallows his grief, his loss, his loneliness, and drags him to his feet.

“You smell like you’ve been sleeping in a dumpster full of perfume samples and cheap beer,” he grumbles, as he herds the uncooperative young man up the stairs. “I don’t feel like being sick all night, so you have to be washed. You won’t do it yourself, I’ll do it for you. Don’t fucking test me.”

“Fuck!” Gabriel yelps, as he’s hauled up by his mesh top, struggling a bit before going limp and resigned, kicking slightly, bare feet thumping on the steps.

He shivers at the coldness of the house, noting fairly bare walls and a general lack of pictures…weird. He twists out of the firm grip, losing his shirt in the process as he’s shoved into a white-tiled bathroom. Rubbing his arms as his skin prickles. Shucking off his leather pants and left in the clinging, black-silk thong. He’s starting to get a sinking feeling the detective isn’t letting him loose soon. The doors were double-bolted. No good there. If he left him alone long enough he could grab his boots and coat and break out through a window maybe?

“I can bathe my fucking self old man,” he says, his glower pointed at his toes.

“Oh, can you?” Jack snorts. “Maybe you should try it sometime.”

Keeping half an eye on the seething kid, he kneels down and opens the cabinet, taking out a fresh bar of soap, a packaged toothbrush, and a disposable razor. He sets these on the counter beside a clean towel and washcloth.

“All the way,” he says, indicating to the flimsy thong. “I know you’ve been in the county lockup plenty of times, so a full-body search isn’t new to you. Cooperate, and I’ll be quick about it.”

Reyes sneers defiantly and tosses away his underwear like he doesn’t give a shit, big, pierced cock hanging free between his thighs like he’s displaying it on purpose. But Jack can smell fear on him just as heavy as cigarette smoke. And he flinches like a beaten dog when the older man lays a hand on him.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” Jack says calmly. “Unless you force me to. So don’t.”

He’s sure the kid doesn’t have any more weapons on him, but he’s still wary regarding drugs. He has too much personal experience with the things addicts will do to smuggle a fix into confinement. Of course, it’s less likely since the boy didn’t know where he was going, but you can’t be too careful. What he’s really looking for are tracks. Telltale needle-burns that would indicate the need for a more rigorous regimen. He gives a palpable sigh of relief to find none on that gorgeous, dusky-brown hide.

He feels the boy’s scalp all over under his blue-streaked curls, makes him open his mouth and swipes a finger inside his cheeks and under his tongue. The kid spreads his legs automatically, accustomed to such searches. Jack kneels down and parts his taut, round ass, searching as briefly as possible and feeling a lot like a dirty old man.

“Ok, good,” he says, getting to his feet. “This is soap. Use it. Take as long as you want in the shower, but don’t fucking flood the floor with water. It has a curtain for a reason. And don’t get any cute ideas. That window doesn’t open and it’s too small to fit your ass through anyway. I’m going to get you some clothes.”

He collects the boy’s shed clothing and leaves the bathroom, hoping he’ll take his time. He looks like he’s twisting on a wire between anxiety and fatigue and the hot water might calm him down enough to rest.

Gabriel realizes after the door clicks shut that he really doesn’t have a choice. He fumes as he snatches up the razor and steals a bottle of shaving soap, using the sink mirror to shave his face smooth with vindictive pleasure at the sweet musk of amber and sandalwood. Something expensive-smelling. It leaves his cheeks smooth and he likes how the scent lingers. No name on the bottle. A gift? He takes it into the shower cranking up the heat. He’ll use it to shave everywhere. Come out smelling like a thousand-dollar whore.

“That’ll teach the old man,” he purrs to himself, cock starting to harden after being blue-balled all night. “He did say take my time...”

It’ll be nice anyway, getting an uninterrupted shower. He steps into the rush of water, twitching the shower curtain shut and arching under the spray, one hand cupping his balls as he scrubs his fingers over his hair, before leaving off playing with himself to grab the shampoo. Time to get cleaned up.

Jack tosses the black thong in the waste bin. The hoodie and tank top go into the laundry hamper. He goes to his walk-in closet and hangs up the leather pants and jacket. He tears open a package of plain, white briefs and takes out a pair, then he sighs and reluctantly turns to the small, dark-wood dresser in the closet. On top sits a small, framed photograph of a strikingly handsome, dark-skinned man in an officer’s dress-blues. He opens the top drawer hesitantly. With heavy hands, he takes out a white v-neck undershirt and a pair of deep-purple pajama pants, made of some kind of soft, stretchy cotton.

“I hope you don’t mind if I borrow a couple things, mi amor. My clothes are way too big for him,” he says softly to the picture. “He…he needs help, Ollie. I fucked up pretty bad, but I’m trying to do the right thing, here. Like you would do.”

Jack brushes away a tear and calms himself before returning to the bathroom. The kid is still bathing. Good. He drops the clothes and underwear on the counter and goes back to his bedroom, where he changes into a black tank top and grey pajama pants. Then he switches on the TV and lies in his bed to watch the news and doze till the kid gets out of the shower.

Gabriel steps out of the shower, scowling at the clothes by the side of the sink. He towels off, staring at them like they’re going to bite. Feeling a little more mellow after washing his frustrations down the drain in a mess. He slowly drags on the v-neck and the pants, which cling to his freshly-shaved skin. They’re sinfully soft and warm and he wants to bundle up in them and purr. He can’t help but wonder where the fuck someone as thick as Morrison found something in his size. It rankles a bit he didn’t get his own clothes back, but the detective’s such an ass about _cleanly_ he figures he’ll give them back once they’re washed or some shit.

He saunters out of the bathroom dressed in the good-boy clothes and smelling like amber. The detective is nowhere in sight. He pauses. Listening, edging toward the stairs. He might lose his clothes, but surely he can snag his boots and get out a first-story window? If he’s caught, he could use the excuse he wants a smoke? Or he could just wait and distract him until he drifts off to sleep like a real old man. He’s not sure what Morrison is planning but that pat-down has him feeling like he’s back in lockup again. Like he’s getting ready to do time.

“Get the fuck in here,” Jack calls gruffly from his bedroom.

He’d heard the kid come slinking out of the bathroom and he’s not an idiot. They’ve handled recovering addicts here before. He knows he’ll take any chance to try and bolt. Jack hasn’t changed anything about the house in the years since Olivér passed. The only thing he could bring himself to touch were all the happy photos of the smiling couple that his husband had gotten framed and put all over the house. Those are safe in a box in the basement, where they can’t tempt him to eat his gun. The windows downstairs are locked tight, but he’d prefer not to have to deal with broken glass and a trip to the emergency room with a sliced-up punk tonight. The punk in question saunters into the room, all youthful defiance and mop of damp curls in Ollie’s pajamas. Jack catches himself in an involuntary smile and clears his throat.

“You can go to bed, or you can sit here and watch the news with me.” He points to the kid’s cigarettes and lighter, on the dresser. “If you’re going to smoke, open the window. There’s an ash tray on the sill.”

With that, he turns his attention back to the news reporter, who is dramatically recounting her “near-death experience” in that fucking stupid riot. He doesn’t care. He just likes the noise. Silence is…too loud to listen to.

“Idiots,” Gabriel says idly, having caught the end of the news. He has already slumped on the sill to nudge up the window and light a smoke. “That’s not what happened at all.”

Because the news media always gets it wrong don’t they? Hell, he’d been there for part of that, and his friends had stayed after he’d had to bail when things got too hot and too many cops showed up to clear the place out. Sure, they’d gotten rowdy, but a bunch of skinheads had tried to turn their sit-in into something else and they’d needed a thrashing, which turned into a brawl which turned into a ‘riot’. But if you cleaned up nice, then the news loved it. Cover your tattoos and pull out your piercings folks!

“Why does anyone even bother watching this? I’d rather rot my brain on something entertaining, I guess. Or listen to music.”

He snorts on a small cloud of smoke, blowing it out of his nose before exhaling it properly. Fuck he hopes his roommate didn’t hock his guitar. He’d had to work a lot of hours on his knees to get that thing. Not exactly a hardship, but still risky enough.

“It wasn’t even a riot when it started,” Jack grunts, keeping his eyes on the TV. “Those fucking skinheads went in there and fucked up a legal act of civil disobedience. And the cops on scene made it worse. So fucking stupid.”

He glances at the kid, slumped languidly against the window sill. Soft, blue and black curls hanging over his honey-brown forehead, almost falling into his big, alluring, long-lashed eyes. He presses the cigarette to those pouting lips and Jack has to look away. He’s so goddamned beautiful and he has no idea. Uses that gorgeous young body to…what? Survive? What choice has he had? Jack feels a pang of guilt for judging him. And for that remark about slutting up his makeup earlier. But he wishes the kid wouldn’t smear that blue shit all over his perfect mouth, foul and full of backtalk as it is.

“You can watch whatever you want,” he says carelessly, adjusting to a more comfortable position on his pillows. “I don’t care. I just like the noise. Remote’s here on the nightstand.”

_Now there’s an idea._

Gabriel’s lips curl into a smirk. He wishes he had his lipstick or his gloss. Maybe the red or pink? Something to really make his pout pop. He rises, stubbing out the half cigarette on the tray before he drops it in the box to reuse later. Snapping the window shut and twisting off the narrow seat to tiptoe toward the bed. Hands clasped behind his back as he turns his smirk into a honey-sweet smile, ducking his head so his curls fall over his face more, blue and black.

“Does that mean I can lay in bed with you, daddy?”

Oh yes old man, he hasn’t forgotten that little line while he was on his knees. Just having the edge taken off with a hot shower does not a satisfying night make, and he fully intends to see what Detective Morrison wants out of this setup. Jack turns and eyes the kid cagily, but he has to draw up his knees to hide his immediate physical response to the sweet, husky voice practically drooling that word off his filthy little tongue.

“You ever cut the shit and just be yourself?” he says, a little too gruffly. He begins again in a milder tone. “Listen…I know what happened back there, in the alley. I don’t want you to think this is because of that. I don’t want to f—I mean I do, but that has nothing to do with—”

Jack breaks off and feels his face flush with heat. Fuck. It’s been way too long and he has no idea how to talk to an attractive young man. This was so much easier when the kid was just a tramped-up dirtbag in leather and eyeliner, sucking him off behind a grimy club. Now he’s so soft and warm and…real.

“I mean, don’t try to use that daddy shit with me,” he says irritably. He picks up his mug from the night stand and takes a deep swallow. “You can sit in my bed and watch TV with me. You don’t have to pretend you… _want_ me, or anything. I’m an old man, and I know it. I don’t need my ego stroked by some fucking teenager.”

“I’m twenty-fucking-three, so get over yourself.” Old enough to drink, and to have made enough mistakes to be jaded. Gabriel crawls into the bed, stealing Jack’s mug and setting it aside firmly. “Caffeine is bad for you at this time of night, daddy.”

The remote is next. He points it behind himself to shut off the TV, plunging the room into soft dimness, lit only by the bedside lamp. It’s homey compared to hotel rooms and apartments and clubs. He settles slowly into Jack’s lap. Victory makes him feel better, makes him feel a little more in control as he straddles him properly. One arm sliding around Jack’s neck to gently curl his fingers in the surprisingly soft, white hair at his nape. Admiring that handsome face up-close without bad neon lighting to obscure his view.

“Caffeine,” Jack grumbles, looking after his mug. “That’s whiskey, you little—ah!—punk.”

The soft gasp is yanked out of his throat as the boy’s firm ass comes down in his lap. Before Jack can process what’s happening, he’s being curled around by lithe young limbs and sat upon as if the boy is a cat. A warm, heavy cat. That smells unbelievably good and whose face is so tantalizingly close to his. The kid shuts the TV off and Jack tries to frown. Thinks he might have succeeded. Can’t tell for sure. There are fingers working into his hair and raising goosebumps all down his neck.

“Who’s to say this isn’t just a part of me?” Gabriel purrs. “Maybe I like it. Maybe I don’t. You don’t really get to tell me what I can and can’t like. Not when you dragged me all the way here, spit-shined me, and told me to be good. So here I am. This is me being good. Very good. And I want my god…damn…reward.”

Jack should toss the boy off bed and lock him up in the guest bedroom for the night. He should. He tries to do it. Tries so hard, but his body won’t obey him. He stares helplessly into the defiant, dark-brown eyes. So close. So close he can feel the kid’s warm breath on his cheek.

“Your…reward,” he repeats numbly, without really knowing what he’s saying. His hands are wandering up onto those muscular thighs in the buttery-soft pajama pants. He swallows hard. “What do you…what kind of reward?”

_Got him._

Gabriel smiles that sweet, sweet little grin. Brushes his lips over the silvery scruff on the man’s cheeks, then over the scars he’d admired in the half-light. Mmm. So damn good-looking. Way better than his usual options.

“I ate and washed up and shaved and did all the things you told me to do, daddy. So, I want my reward.” He rolls his hips down, slow and heavy. Like he’s dancing in a club, filthy and deliberate and adding a little twist so his ass drags harder right over the crux of Jack’s lap. Lips teasingly close to Jack’s as he whines, “Or do I have to be better, daddy? What do I have to do? To get your dick in my mouth again, so I can enjoy giving you the best damn blowjob?” He pouts as his head dips, mouth dancing along his jaw. “You know I swallow too, daddy. Not a drop wasted…”

Jack’s mind is trying to work, all his synapses firing madly, trying to complete a thought. If he fucks this kid, then…what? There will be consequences. Fallout. Some bitter, angry shit before he leaves for good. Or something even more dangerous. He might not leave. He’s been pinned down under heavy fire, captured and tortured by the enemy, and still his mind has never stalled on him so hard. He’s always been able to keep control of himself. To think things out to the logical conclusions and stick to the plan. Luckily, the Tamil rebels hadn’t had Gabriel Reyes as an interrogator. No one has been able to get to him like this since…not since Ollie.

The thought of his departed husband twists his chest with anger and grief and too many complex emotions to parse or comprehend. He doesn’t want to feel that right now. He wants to feel anything else. Anything but the cold, clinging, black mire into which he has been slowly sinking since the light of his life was snuffed out.

He knows his decision was made the minute he didn’t slap cuffs on the kid. He takes a deep breath, reaches up behind his neck and traps the boy’s wrists in his big, calloused hands. Before Gabriel can think to react, Jack flips him onto his back, pinning his wrists to the mattress above his head. He leans over him and presses his lips against the boy’s ear.

“You don’t even know what you’re asking for,” he growls, low and soft. “You think you’re so badass and so _experienced_. Sure, you’ve had too many dicks in you to keep count, but you don’t know what it’s like, do you? To be fucked by someone who means it.”

Well, _fuck_ him, this is far better than Gabriel had expected it to go. He thought he’d give him head and maybe get to grind on his thigh to get off. He’s trapped under him now, thighs spread wide with Jack’s knees between them to keep him that way. Wrists caught in that iron grip as warm, damp air huffs over his ear and leaves him tingling right down to his damn toes.

His expression goes hazy-dark with want and he finds himself melting into the mattress. His body is used to this sort of thing. Eager to play and eager to get its ‘reward’. The endorphin rush is way better than the few club pills he’s indulged in. Better than nicotine or booze, sex is its own drug for him; one he indulges in as much and as often as he can, to chase the false high of ‘affection’ that comes with the pleasure. That one shining, glorious fucking moment when he’s someone’s whole world.

“Daddy _please_ ,” he purrs softly. “Stop being so mean. I’m trying. I’m trying to be good for you.”

He means it too, somewhere. Hopes Morrison thinks it’s part of his game, but the detective is prying some things out of him that normally take a Dom a lot of money and effort and time to get out of him during play. He lies passive under him, fawn-quiet and still warm from his shower. Blinking sluggishly as he peers through his lashes at the man, now silhouetted by the lamp behind him. Cast into stark shadows and the orange-gold fire of lamplight caught in pale hair.

_Got him._

The corners of Jack’s firm lips quirk up in a little smile. He’s been around enough addicts to have smelled it all over this one, but since it clearly wasn’t drugs, he’d been at a loss. Thought the old radar was finally giving out. But now he knows with laser-sharp precision what is this boy’s particular drug of choice. Sex. Not just sex, the emotional high he gets from being wanted and needed, and even used. He cranes down and covers that delicious, pouting mouth with his. Caresses that talented, pierced tongue with his, pours himself into the kiss until it bruises their lips and they are both panting for breath. Then he draws back and looks down into the boy’s languid, coffee-black eyes.

“You have to earn it, Gabriel,” he says softly, laying a hand on the boy’s cheek. “I’m not going to reward you until you show me you’re willing to work for it. So tonight, you’re going to sleep here in my bed with me. You’re not going to try get me to fuck you. You’re not going to whine or pout or fight with me. Lie here next to me like a good boy, for one whole night, and I will give you your reward in the morning.”

Gabriel bites into his lip, frustration peaking at the idea of waiting that long, of lying here quietly and hoping Jack pays out in the morning. It cuts through some of the good haze he always gets when he’s held down and covered with a body bigger than his own. Heart flipping in his chest as the warm palm caresses him, callouses catching on his smooth cheek. He tips his head slowly, lipping at his palm, his wrist with little nibbles. Not saying anything yet.

Thinning his lips out before he finally tries to slither away from him. “Fine. Ok, yeah. Sure. Whatever you want, daddy…”

He’s not fighting. He can be good. Fuck him, he can be so good. He resists the urge to shove the older man away as he manages to wriggle onto his side, worrying at the bar in his tongue with a furious scowl on his face. Staring at the window and wondering if its too late to finish his cigarette. Twisting his hips now and then, half-hard once more with nothing to do with it. He wraps his arms around himself, feeling cold as the high drops out from under him so fast.

Jack suppresses a smile at the childish way Gabriel pulls himself away. Dragging his lithe body sullenly over to the other side of the bed. This is technically pouting, but he guesses he’ll let it go. This is much better than he had expected. Ok. Time for his first test.

“I’ve got to shower,” he says nonchalantly. “Smoke or watch TV if you want. I doubt you’d be interested, but there are some books on that shelf.” He gets up to go, then gives the kid’s arm a gentle pat. “And thank you, Gabriel, for being so good. I’m proud of you.”

He strolls to the bathroom and pauses a moment before he shuts the door. He needs the shower, but more importantly, he needs to jerk off. His cock is fucking excruciatingly hard. He turns on the shower as hot as it will go (little shit used up almost all the hot water) and steps in. He knows what a risk it is to leave the boy alone so soon, but the worst he can do is…he doesn’t know. Set fire to the house? No. The worst he can do is leave. A resourceful kid like Gabriel probably has more than a few tricks for escaping when he really needs to.

Jack suddenly realizes he hopes he won’t go, then he leans heavily on the wall shaking and out of breath. Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck. The kid is getting to him. Working his way right down into Jack’s stonewalled heart and carving out a raw, bloody hole to live in. He shouldn’t be so shocked. He should have seen this coming. It isn’t just the kid’s looks that remind him of Ollie. It’s that there’s something earnest and brilliant and true about him. It’s buried so deep, but when the real Gabriel shines through the layers of makeup and self-defense, it’s dazzling. Jack feels almost unworthy of that kind of inner beauty. And outer beauty. Gabriel Reyes is an earthbound seraph…or Lucifer himself.

Either way, Jack wrings himself forcefully to climax, spurting onto the shower tiles, thinking of that warm, silky body pressed beneath his, legs spread wide to take him. He towels off, brushes his teeth, and tries not to hurry back to the bedroom. He’s been living alone so long, it doesn’t occur to him that he’s naked till he steps in the door.

Gabriel is passed out. He’s managed to roll over and curl himself into Jack’s abandoned spot with the news droning again on the TV, not disturbing his stupor and subsequent sleep. Too used to snatching it when he can. Hips twisting now and then into the mattress, arms wrapped around the pillow that smells most like Jack as he humps the bed lightly, making little noises in his sleep, despite how far down he is. His dreams are not good, but they aren’t bad for a change. For now, he’s too hopeful. Doesn’t even think about the escape he might have made. Too fixated on his reward, dangling tantalizingly close. After all, leaving meant maybe never seeing Detective Morrison again, and there was something so enticing about the man. Something that makes him want to sink his teeth in like a street dog and not let go.

Not that he even realizes it, not really, but the gentle praise had been what convinced him to stay. Warmed him to his core, despite his neglected hard-on, the words circling his head as he fell asleep. Black and blue curls strewn messily in his face and over the pillow. Fingers kneading now and then with a low breathy sigh. A few extra pounds and more muscle and he might even be something to be reckoned with, but now, without the makeup and the scowl, those twenty-three years look far younger on his lean, smooth face.

Jack almost reaches down to stroke the boy’s hair, but he becomes suddenly aware of his state of undress and what that will suggest, should the boy wake up. He goes to his dresser and pulls on a pair of black boxer-briefs. After a moment’s debate, he forgoes a t-shirt. He’ll get to feel at least a little bit of Gabriel’s skin pressed up against his bare chest. His reward to himself for all of this trouble.

Before he turns out the light, he eyes himself in the mirror. Even he has to admit how excellent he looks for his age. He’s well over fifty, but his broad, square chest shows no sign of softening beneath its pelt of curly, silver hair. His stomach is still flat, and though it’s not as chiseled as it was when he was in his twenties, the hard ridges of muscle are at least still visible. His body is beaten, weathered, and scarred. It bears all the marks of a life well and fearlessly lived.

But he had only lived half his life before he lost what made it worthwhile. His heart lies deep in the cold earth, buried with his beloved these ten long years. The longest years he’s ever lived. He sighs and shuts off the light, and begins to climb into bed (on the wrong side, the little shit). Then he pauses, turns back, and for the first time in a decade, clicks off the television before he goes to sleep. He wraps his arms around the squirming, fitfully sleeping boy and drifts off to sleep with only the silence and Gabriel’s deep, soft breathing to keep him company.


	3. Chapter 3

Gabriel wakes up slowly for the first time in recent memory. Warm and soft and comfortable without the sticky feeling of something dried between his thighs—only between his thighs, mind, he was an addict sure, but he wasn’t stupid—and over his belly or face. Slowly rubbing his legs together as he stretches. Giving a low whine as he blinks sluggishly in pre-dawn light, smacking his lips together. No booze breath, no soreness save for the bruises on his chest and back and sides from his fight

 _What_ … _oh_.

He registers the weight of muscular arms pinning him to a fuzzy chest. One leg caught between his own, and that is fucking agony when he goes to rock against it, only to recall the little agreement he made last night. He grinds his teeth together, still too tired to fuss much, as with the practice of a man used to sneaking away from his lover, he slips the noose that is Jack’s grip. Thumbing the sleep pants off with a yawn and lightly toying with the prince-Albert in the head of his cock. Yawning to himself as he continues to fondle his half-hard morning stiffy.

He drops into the window seat and rummages on the sill for his cigarette and lighter. The taste of nicotine is familiar at least. He nudges the window open just enough to stare blearily into the morning as he idly pumps along the shaft and grazes over his balls. Wonders if he can get off before the Detective gets up. Serve him right if Gabriel makes a mess. He blows a ring of smoke into the morning air and hums. Dropping his forehead to the wood edge of the window. Still so tired, but not in the ways he usually is. Not in the exhausted, oversexed, but under-satisfied ways…cold and shaking as he trips over strewn clothes in his haste to just escape. He leaves off his cock to twine his fingers tightly in his curls.

Despite not planning on going to the precinct today, Jack wakes at his customary, early hour. He hasn’t needed to set an alarm in decades. Ollie used to tease him about it. Call him the one dumb cock who’s already crowing before the sun comes up. He lies still and silent, not wanting to disturb the soft, warm, boy in his arms. He smells like caramel or honey, something Jack can’t quite put his finger on it. But it’s intoxicating. Thank fuck he thought to take care of himself in shower last night, or he might have humped one out on the kid in his sleep.

He lies there thinking about how to approach sex. He made that bargain not exactly in his right mind, but he can’t make an agreement and fail to fulfill it. That would just teach the kid not to trust him and make him feel confused and unbalanced. This is an exchange, like any relationship. Just…a little stricter. If he expects Gabriel to follow the rules, he has to follow them, too.

He feels the boy stir and pretends to be asleep. Lets him slither out of his arms like a little snake. He hears him move around for a minute, then open the window. The cool, balmy air flows in, punctuated by the pungent aroma of tobacco smoke. He lets his eyes open a crack and watches the boy, who, unaware that he is observed, is in a rare, unguarded state. Not posing for once, he’s suddenly worthy of a painting. As divine as an angel on the Sistine Chapel ceiling.

His sinewy brown arm drops and he sits absently stroking his gorgeous, steel-ornamented cock. Not for anyone, but simply because it feels good to him. He lets go of his cock and puts his hand in his hair, wringing his curls in what appears to be distress. Jack feels guilty for watching him. He stirs noisily in the bed and gives a cough, sitting up as though he has just awakened.

The boy’s eyes narrow and dart toward him, like a hunted thing with no escape, determined to stand its ground. Jack tosses him a casual nod as he gets up and heads for the bathroom to piss and brush his teeth. There’s a hollow ache in the pit of his stomachas he rinses his mouth. He wants the kid so badly it physically hurts. Wants to take this wild, beautiful boy and make him his own more than anything in the world. It would be far better to wait. He shouldn’t do it at all, but that’s not an option. He made the boy a deal.

_Show him you can be trusted, Jack. This is the most crucial thing._

 

Jack is awake. Detective Morrison is awake. Gabriel stubs out his cigarette, watching the man slip from the room. He crawls back into the abandoned warm space, cloves and musk and amber-sweet as he rolls in the sheets. Wiggling against the softness, sprawling on his belly to gently hump against the warmth. Dragging a pillow back and nuzzling into it with a sigh. He spreads his knees and grinds his pierced cock into the bed with a little moan, biting idly into the pillow case as the barbells and ring catch on the sheets and pull at his dick so nicely.

He’s really not expecting the old man to pay out. Why should he?

He should really get up, get the day started, but he isn’t even sure what that means, anyway. He supposes it’s what happens whenever the detective gets bored with whatever he’s trying to accomplish here. Humming a happy sigh as he starts a slow, steady grind into the mattress. Cock going from half-hard to leaking readily enough, as he reaches underneath himself to roll his balls across his palm.

He doesn’t hear Jack enter the bedroom again. Lost in the moment of getting himself off, of working off the early morning jitters and heat in the luxury of a real bed that he doesn’t need to run off from just yet. He thinks about Jack. Why not? The smell of the man is everywhere and it’s clean and sharp and heady. He buries his face in the pillow with a grunt. Slipping his fingers from his balls to twist the bars in the underside before trailing up to play with the ring in the leaking head.

Licking his lips as he mewls, “Ah…fuck yeah…”

Jack stops short in the doorway, his stomach doing a flip that shoots straight down into his balls and up the shaft of his dick. The boy is touching himself. Face buried in Jack’s pillow, legs spread lasciviously wide, working those narrow, angular hips and flexing his taut, round ass. It’s so captivating that Jack stands there watching perforce, unable to move or breathe. Like Salome dancing for the head of John the Baptist. He shivers at the ominously apposite comparison (his proper name being John and having been raised Baptist) and shakes himself.

“Having fun?” he says gruffly.

The boy leaps around like a wild dog, almost snarling, but seems to catch himself. He drops back into that false, cloying, pout and tries for a kiss.

“Not a chance,” Jack says, stepping back. “Go brush your teeth and then get your pretty ass back in here.”

The boy skulks out of the room as Jack opens a drawer in his night table and sets a bottle of lubricant on it. He sits on the edge of the bed, then he has a sudden thought. As silly and stupid as it is, he hops up and shuts the closet door, with an apologetic glance at the photo of his departed husband. Ollie had told him not to waste his life making it a shrine to him after he was gone, but this is the first time Jack has acted on that selfless benediction. The guilt almost overwhelms him. But that smooth, smoky voice reaches out over the long years to soothe his tormented heart.

_You have so much love to give, Jackie. Don’t throw it away after I’m gone. It helps me to think of you making someone else as happy as you’ve made me._

Jack swallows the ache that rises in his throat and takes a few deep breaths. As the boy comes slinking back into the room, he looks up and holds out his hand. “Come here, mijo.”

The word rolls over Gabriel, familiar and foreign all at once. The taste of mint still melting in his mouth, bitter and sweet all at once. The false menthol promise like the other lies in his life.He balks, nose flaring. A little wild-eyed. Folds his arms in front of himself. Something like shyness in the long, near-mincing gait, like a spooked animal, as he slowly approaches Jack where he’s seated on the bed. His own cock still hard between his thighs, the shirt barely covers to his hips and his bare feet make the softest noise on the floor.

Then he’s standing in front of Jack. Staring at him. Still. A little bewildered. A little flushed, though the pink is lost in his skin-tone for the most part, only evident in the thin skin of his ears as he shuffles his feet slowly.

“Sí, papi…?”

When was the last time he spoke freely? When was the last time someone called him mijo? It aches low in his belly and his eyes narrow a bit as he hunches his shoulders. Some of the glossy pout wiped away by the surprise. Rocking on his toes now. Waiting to see what the Detective is up to. Hungry and hot and genuinely fucking thrown for a loop. He’s scrabbling a bit for his cue, for the familiar tells and calls. The lubricant on the bedside table is heartening, even if he’s not sure Morrison knows what it’s good for.

Jack is momentarily speechless as he watches this almost-physical transformation occur before his eyes. The hard, defiant punk is gone. Like he was never there. This is Gabriel. A sweet, fragile, frightened young man, battered and bruised on the cruel wheel of life, and terrified to be hurt again.

Jack hadn’t intended to blow down the boy’s defenses like this. His mind had been on Ollie, and he’d slipped into Spanish without realizing it. But it seems to be so important to Gabriel. He couldn’t take that from him now. He stands up and gently pulls the t-shirt off over the boy’s head, then draws him close. He’s nearly as tall as Jack, but he feels small and delicate as he leans warily into the embrace. Jack gazes down into his wide, dark-brown eyes.

“Muy lindo,” he murmurs, stroking the boy’s curls with his fingertips. “Bésame, cariño.”

Jack meets Gabriel halfway as he cranes his face up toward him, pressing their mouths together in a long, soft, searching kiss. He lifts the boy off his feet and lays him down in his bed, then he peels off his boxer-briefs, freeing his painfully-rigid cock. The boy’s eyes dart to it and he swallows hard. Jack can’t tell if it’s desire or fear. Maybe both.

He stands still, running his eyes appreciatively over the flawless young body for a moment, then he chuckles. He hadn’t noticed before, but the boy has apparently shaved all his body hair. No wonder he’d been in the shower so long. He kneels between Gabriel’s thighs and bends over him, pressing kisses into every inch of his silky, honey-scented chest and stomach, working downward. He cups and fondles his baby-smooth sack, as he begins to lap his tongue over the steel ring in the head of his swollen, leaking cock.

Gabriel curls slowly toward his chest as Jack reels him in so sweetly. It feels like a trap. His skin prickles with the praise, with the compliments. Kissing him slowly, softly. He makes a low noise when Jack lifts him so easily off his feet and lays him carefully in the bed. Shuddering as he looks away and back at him in slow glances. Jack’s big, and that’s appealing in so many ways. He lies there quietly as Jack’s eyes glide down his smooth-shaven body.

Biting into his lip as Jack’s calloused fingers drag along his testicles. Arousal rising in eager surges now. Gasping feather-soft, and squirming when the hot mouth finds the head of his dick. The slick tongue chasing the piercing through the head. Sending jolts of need through him as he bites back quiet noises. Writhing against the bed slightly as his white teeth sink into his plush, dark lip. Nose flaring with light huffs as slick drips from his cock. Balls already taut and flushed with the promise of release. On a hair-trigger and trying to keep from falling back into that hazy space and stay clear-headed for this.

Jack’s head is spinning, face warm and flushed, intoxicated on the heat and scent and taste of the boy. The salty tang of pre-ejaculate on his tongue, just enough to whet his appetite for more. He slides his hands under Gabriel’s round ass and lifts, cradling and squeezing it. The boy’s knees come up and Jack spreads him apart, dives down into his musky heat, covers his perfect, taut little hole with his mouth.

Gabriel bucks and shivers, making soft, plaintive sounds in his throat, fingers twining and curling in Jack’s hair. Jack reaches up and fondles the thick, pierced cock, gently tugging and twisting the steel barbells and ring as he devours his delicious asshole. His tongue draws smooth circles around the sensitive rim, trespasses the resistant opening once or twice, draws back and dives again.

Rimjobs had been a favorite of Jack’s. It’s been a long time, but he hasn’t gotten too rusty. He’d be more than happy to get the boy off just like this. He needs Jack to fuck him properly, though. Needs to be held down and filled up and… _loved_. He gives the tight hole another long, lingering sweep of his tongue and then sits up on his knees, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

“Hold your legs up for me,” he says, in a firm, quiet tone that leaves no room for discussion. “Little higher. Good.”

Gabriel watches, wide-eyed and quiet, as Jack pops open the cap of the lube and drizzles some over his asshole, then slicks his fingers. He supports one tawny thigh with his left hand, rocking him back a little more to spread him as wide as he can comfortably go.

“Good. Good boy,” he murmurs. He carefully works the first finger inside. “You’re so tight, mijo, Christ. Tell me if it hurts.”

Despite Gabriel’s youth, Jack had expected someone with his boldly hypersexual manner to feel more…experienced. His asshole is as tight as drum. Jack’s cock throbs with longing at the thought of penetrating it, pushing into that resistant heat and stretching it around himself like a second skin.

He restrains the urge and goes slow, adding more lube, patiently working in the second finger, relishing the constricting feeling as he scissors his fingers apart to open him up. Gabriel gives another soft whine, and Jack looks up to gauge his comfort level. His eyelashes are fluttering over heavy-lidded eyes, pouting lips hanging apart, wet and wanton. Waiting to be taken.

Gabriel is sweating by the time Morrison moves from giving him the tongue-fucking of a lifetime, catching his knees as Jack continues to twist and turn him under his hands while barely laying an actual hand on him. Eyes heavy, mouth slick and damp, moaning out a low affirmative as the praise rolls over him in thick, sweet waves. Grinding his teeth to bite back the soft whines, hips jerking as his cock hangs heavy and dripping over his belly. A puddle on his flat stomach as Jack’s first finger finally twists into him. Keening as he feels that hazy, heavy lock over his joints. Especially as Jack pushes his free palm against his thigh, his ass, helping angle Gabriel so easily as he holds himself wide open for Jack to explore.

The second finger slides in even easier than the first. Tossing his head side to side, curls sticking flat to his skin and he’s not sure how long Morrison has been playing with him but it’s so good. The last of the tension seeps out of his wary frame. Clenching around his fingers eagerly, rocking down in light, abortive motions. Lube squeezed under to drip down the curve of his ass as he bites at his lip and shudders.

Pupils blown wide, lashes heavy over flushed angular cheeks, whimpering, “Papi…s’good, papi.”

The word papi drops like a glob of honey from Gabriel’s sweet, smutty lips and drives Jack over the line from controlled patience to scorching need. He can’t deny himself any longer. He has to have him now.

Gabriel gives a little purring whine as Jack draws out his fingers. It turns into a wide-eyed gasp as the big, blunt head of Jack’s cock presses against the tight pucker. No more teasing, no more playing. He’s going to be fucked by someone who knows how. Jack hooks the long legs over his shoulders and bends him almost in half, holding Gabriel’s gaze with his blue eyes as he sinks gradually into the velvety, constricting heat. Gabriel clenches his teeth and squeezes his eyes shut, a tear rolling down his tawny cheek. Jack stops and strokes his thighs. Gives him time to breathe through the burn as the ring of muscle stretches to accommodate Jack’s very substantial size. 

“¿Estás bien, mijo?” he says, reaching down to brush matted curls away from Gabriel’s damp forehead. “Is it too much?”

“Esta bien, papi.” More then. He clenches again, unable to get enough leverage to try and grind against the older man. Thighs closing around Jack’s waist as he gives a lopsided, sloppy smile. “So good, daddy. Ah…ha…ngh—”

Jack pushes again, a slow, girthy slide till he bottoms out, seated firmly inside him, almost all the way to his pubic bone. Gabriel’s toes flex as his breath comes out in deep, damp pants. Staring up at intensely ice blue eyes, turning his head to muzzily nuzzle into his fingers and palm as the calm rough voice talks him through it. Getting used to being _bare-backed_ , because that…that is a first for him. He’s always made his partners use condoms. Jack’s bare skin curves over and around him and inside him, hot and so fucking thick he feels like he can practically taste the detective’s cock. Watching how his stomach flutters and clenches as the older man takes his time getting settled deep inside. So fucking deep inside it’s blowing his mind a little. This is what he wanted, needed, craved worse than nicotine or candy or money or gifts.

Turning to rub his cheek on the pillow with a low mewl, lean chest arching slightly. Nipples rough and hard on his chest as he moans softly, “Bien, muy bien. Cogéme, por favor, papi.”

Not a demand, a breathless request. Begging as his hands tuck under the pillow beneath his head and clutch at it firmly, restraining himself just for Jack.

Keeping his pelvis pressed flush against Gabriel’s ass, Jack rocks his hips, massaging the boy’s prostate as they move together. A shiver crawls down his spine and settles deep and low, beginning to coil into a knot of pleasure in his gut. The boy is whining, begging, grinding on him, bearing down on his cock to get more pressure. Jack obliges. Leaning forward on Gabriel’s legs, he pulls out and thrusts deep again. He lets the boy set their pace, finding his rhythm and thrusting into the roll of his hips as they come up to meet him.

“You feel—ah! You feel so good, baby,” he pants. “So good for daddy…fuck!”

Tentatively, he reaches down and caresses Gabriel’s throat with his big, hard hand. Not squeezing, just testing the waters. He’s not sure if this is something that will scare him. Gabriel’s head falls back with a vulnerable, eager air, arching to bare his throat more, pushing slightly into the calloused palm, sinking deeper, sinking so fast, he’s so warm and this is amazing. Normally he’d be so much more wary, so much more guarded, but this is perfect and his ‘daddy’ is going to finally take care of him. 

He clenches down harder, twisting his hips slightly each time Jack presses over his prostate. His dick is leaking neglected against his belly and he’s not even concerned. Fixated on the way Jack shifts against him. Rocking that thick cock into him, stretching him out and leaving him speared, pinned. His expression doe-eyed and slack with bliss as he gasps, “So deep—”

His hands dig harder into the underside of the pillow as more punched-out noises escape from his throat, vibrating against Jack’s big palm as his feet flex and kick slightly, uselessly. All the false, predatory intensity wiped away and left the goodness and warmth.

A near sigh. He nearly simpers. “W—wanna make daddy feel good too…”

“I know you do, cielito,” Jack purrs, stroking the boy’s cheek. “You’re gonna make me come soon. I want you to come for me first. Show me what kind of mess you can make with that gorgeous dick while I fuck your hot little pussy.”

He covers Gabriel’s open mouth with a deep, searching kiss and then draws back enough to gaze into his long-lashed eyes, speeding his pace, changing his angle a little, to thrum against the boy’s prostate as he thrusts.

“Come for me, mijo,” he grunts. His strong hand closes on the boy’s throat again, squeezing just hard enough to stop his breath. “Show papi how good you can be.”

Gabriel gasps as his throat is closed on. The sudden increase in angle and pressure and pleasure makes him dizzy as his detective fucks him in harder, faster strokes, forcing his entire cock over his prostate. His legs kick out, toes splayed, wheezing as as his fingernails dig into the pillow, but he doesn’t protest. The opposite. Writhing under Jack with low noiseless gasps, mouth opening and closing as he flushes visibly. Chest colored deep red as his eyes roll closed. Straining under Jack’s weight before he clamps down. Glove tight and hot and slick. His cock spasming on his belly, coating his chest in pearly white streaks as a thready whine rattles under Jack’s palm. Nose flaring and mouth hanging open from air-hunger and ecstasy.

Gabriel does exactly as he’s told, but it’s so much more than Jack had been prepared for, to see this wild-eyed beauty come so utterly undone for him. The total surrender, the raw, unvarnished purity of his ecstasy, his deep, sucking convulsions as his cock spasms and spurts milky white all over his beautiful, bronze skin.

“So fucking good, mijo…such a good boy…fuck—baby…fuck!” Gabriel’s orgasm drags Jack’s out of him suddenly, hips jerking violently as he pumps the boy’s hot hole full of his seed.

With a shuddering groan, he collapses onto the boy’s flushed, perspiring chest and buries his face in the crook of his warm, fragrant neck. After a moment, he rolls heavily onto his back and lies there catching his breath, fucked out and dazed with intensity of the release.

Gabriel lies there gasping as sweet oxygen rushes into his lungs and sore throat. A low, sputtering wheeze escaping him even as Jack drops his frame over his own. His arms shifting to catch around his shoulders only for the detective to roll away. The sudden cold air in the house hitting his sex-heated and sweat (and other things) slicked skin is like ice water splashing over him.

He’s…he’s not sure what he feels. Cold and shaky as the endorphin rush clears out in his panic which only makes his shaking worse. The high cut short and hard, it gives him a headache on top of his sore ass and hips.

What…what the fuck? Why did he fucking do that? Why did he let him—he’d been bare-backed. Come inside. And he’d just rolled belly-up and begged for it.

He shivers, rolling onto his side and shuddering, tugging a pillow under his head as his shoulders hunch around his ears. Trying to force his muddled head back in order as he feels spunk ooze out of his ass onto his thighs and the sheets beneath his hips. He bites into his lip nearly hard enough that he can taste iron as he tucks his legs up closer to his belly, wondering if he could make a dash for a set of clothes.

Jack feels the bed vibrating. His first, hazy thought is that an earthquake in New York is pretty much unheard of. Then he realizes with a start that it’s Gabriel. He’s trembling so hard the bed is moving with him. Shaking like a junkie after a contaminated dose drops him on his ass. He doesn’t get a chance to question what’s going on with the kid. Instinct takes over immediately.

He hops up, peels the comforter off the bed, and before the kid can react, wraps it around him, rolling him up tight like a little sausage. He leans on the headboard and pulls the shaking boy’s back up against his chest, pinning him securely in the warmth of the comforter and Jack’s heavy, muscular arms.

“Hey, mijo, it’s ok,” he says gently. “You’re crashing pretty hard, but I’ve got you. It’s gonna be ok.”

Gabriel jerks, thrashes a little like a startled cat when Jack practically pounces him. The blanket heavy and hot and soft as it traps him in its circles. Throwing his head back and forth as he snarls.

“Let. Let me go! Let me go you fucking bastard!”

He tries to kick but the fabric is too thick for it. He has no choice but to rest against Jack. Unable to even get his head around to bite him with his back to Morrison’s chest. His own chest rising and falling in heavy wheezes, pupils pinpricks of panic and distress as he bares his teeth at nothing with a low growl.

“Let me go let me go letmego!”

He jerks side to side tiny growls and pops as he snaps his teeth together until he slowly subsides, as his panic is cut by exhaustion after the high drops and the adrenaline rush fades out. Slacking in his grip as he pants harshly, eyes darting around the room.

Jack sighs and wraps his legs around Gabriel’s legs to stop him kicking and thrashing. This was definitely a mistake. But he’d kept his word. He wonders vaguely how long he can keep telling himself that before his guilt over fucking this emotionally-disturbed train wreck of a twenty-three-year-old destroys him from the inside. Can’t let the kid see weakness or self-doubt, though. Have to be the strong one, or he won’t feel safe.

“Kick and fuss all you want,” he says calmly. “You can’t hurt me. I’m a lot stronger than you and I’ve got ten times your experience fighting hand-to-hand. When you get tired of that, we’ll get you hydrated and put some food in you. You’ll feel better once your blood-sugar stabilizes.”

Blood sugar? Gabriel has no idea what that has to do with sex or the detective fucking the shit out of him like that. So he scowls at the wall over the TV and snarls.

“Right. Blood sugar.” His throat aches at him and he subsides a bit more. “Can I get some ice then? If I’m _good_.”

That mocking, sultry drawl is back. Dark eyes slanted with the whorish pout. He wants to forget how much he’d liked the way Jack had so carefully held him by his throat and rocked him right down to his core with it, with the way he looked at him, the way he talked to him. He needs another cigarette.

He hates that the detective made him feel so damn safe and so damn good. It was a dangerous sort of rope. He hadn’t even fucking seen it wrapping around his throat. Now he knows it’s there, though. Now he knows what the detective wants. Or at least has a suspicion.

His lips thin out and he scowls. “I fucking hate you.”

“No, you don’t,” Jack says wearily. “You’re just angry because you don’t understand your emotions.”

He’s heard all of this before, just not from someone with whom he’d just had the most mind-blowing sex of his life (sorry, honey, but let’s be real). He’s unable to entirely conceal his pain at Gabriel’s violently negative response to their intimate interaction, so he tries to mask it with bitterness.

“Don’t worry. I won’t fuck you again. You clearly can’t handle it. You let yourself open up and you’re scared. When you’re scared…you’re an impossible little bastard.”

He loosens his hold on the kid, so he can get up if he wants to. Gabriel might not have years of experience, but he’s had years of fighting dirty, handsy bastards. The second his grip gives way, an elbow lands on Jack’s nose and he’s kicking and scrabbling from the bed.

“Fuck you!”

He snatches the sheet off the floor, glad it fell when Morrison used the blanket to swaddle him. Wrapping it around his frame like a makeshift dress and stalking out of the room for the bathroom.

He wants a shower, he wants to be away from the confusion that is Detective Morrison and he wants to finish his damned breakdown in peace because…because he might be right. And he hates him for that, too. The door slamming is so damned satisfying. He hopes he broke Morrison’s nose, so he can explain that to his fucked-up pig friends.

The hot water sluices stingingly over his skin, cranked up as high as he can get it. Then Gabriel, despite all his bluster, sits on the shower floor with his arms wrapped around his knees and shakes. The usual way he handles his post-sex drop. It’s just…easier. Hiding his face against his knees as he grinds his teeth and lets the water burn his skin clean of the feel of Jack’s hands, which is an allure too strong even for him.

By the time he feels clean and ready to face the Detective, he’s wary all over again. He’d hit him, cursed him, and run away from him. In his own house, mind, but his voice had made him feel raw and hoarse and the heat had made the swelling in his throat worse. As he exits the bathroom, wrapped in the sheet again, he shuffles his feet and thinks about risking descending the stairs toward the kitchen. Maybe he can snatch some food or something. Avoid him. The house is fairly large. It looked like there was a second bedroom. He could wait for Jack to leave and try picking all the locks, maybe force one open with something in the house? He hears Jack move and hurries back into the bathroom.

Jack grabs handful of tissues from the box on the nightstand and clamps them over his nose to stop the gush of blood. He should be angry. He should be furious with the kid, but he’s not. He’s just tired and sad. Keeping the tissues tightly pressed to his throbbing nose, he goes downstairs to the kitchen and rinses it with cold water till it stops bleeding.

Then he turns the water to hot, wets a clean kitchen towel and wipes his body down. He tosses the dirty towel into the laundry room and grabs the kid’s boots on his way back upstairs. He takes the linens off the bed and drops them in the hamper, then he places the kid’s leather pants, jacket, hoodie, tank top, and boots—along with a fresh pair of underwear and socks—in a neat little stack at the end of the bed. All this done, he goes to the closet to dress himself.

As he pulls on his clothes, he smirks at Ollie’s picture. “This is hardly the time for ‘I told you so,’ babe.”

The kid comes sauntering into the bedroom wrapped in the sheet, with a fresh layer of blue slicked onto his mouth and smelling like Jack’s aftershave.

Jack points to his things. “There’s your shit. Get dressed and I’ll drive you to wherever you want to be dropped off.”

Gabriel is expecting some sort of trap. Apprehension in his belly as he slowly picks at his clothes before dressing carefully. Eyeing Jack like it’s an elaborate plot, but soon enough, he’s strapped into the same shitty car. Boots up on the dashboard in the light of day. Worrying at a blue-glossed lip as he stares out the window.

Was it that easy? It wouldn’t be the first time. Tops didn’t like his little freak-out tantrums. Gabriel doesn’t understand them. He thinks Jack is blowing smoke. Emotional drop? What the fuck ever. He doesn’t talk, save to give an address near the alley Jack had picked him up from last night. Jittery to make sure that alcoholic bastard hasn’t sold his shit for drink money.

He stares at the building, unbuckling. “Well, it’s been really fun. I’m sure I’ll see you next time some lowlife crosses your radar, detective.”

He doesn’t need to set his heart on a good man. Good men didn’t keep boys like Gabriel. Hope doesn’t put food in his mouth, either. All he has left to do is open the door and make good his escape, but he can’t seem to do it.

“It’s your choice,” Jack says, keeping his eyes on the steering wheel. Gabriel stops fumbling with the door handle and glares at him. “You keep saying you’re an adult and you’re smart enough to make your own choices. You’re right. So, you have a choice to make now. You’re free to go and disappear back into whatever life you’ve been scraping out for yourself. Or you can go up there, get whatever shit you care about and leave here with me. It’s up to you, Gabriel.”

Jack manages to keep his face cold and unreadable as he leans over the warm, amber-scented kid and pushes the car door open.

“I’m going to sit here in my car and smoke a cigarette. In fifteen minutes, I’ll assume you’ve made up your mind and I’ll go. I won’t come after you. If you come back…we’ll go home.”

Gabriel drags his languid, lanky body out of the car, looking like an icon of the beautiful rebel in that leather and mesh. Jack tries not to watch him as he disappears in the door that leads up to the shithole tenements above the strip club.

He lights one of his own cigarettes, a non-menthol, non-filtered Lucky Strike. He watches the clock and tries to ignore the sick, cold, sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. He’s sure he’ll never see the kid alive again.

_God damn it._

 

He should leave that asshole cop high and dry. He will. He definitely means to…but he gets into an argument with his roommate. Snarling at each other before Max takes a swing at him. Then he’s reeling, blindly shoving his small box of body jewelry into a duffle with all the clothes he can grab while Max hurls blows and drunken insults at him, stuffing his guitar into its carrying case and fleeing the shouting asshole.

He stomps back to the street, staring at the car before he sits down with the duffle and case on his lap and hangs his head. He’s…not sure what he wants right now. Not sure what he can make himself do. He’s not sure he can open the car door and step into it again. 

Pride digs its claws cruelly into his spine. His arms tightening around his things. Mumbling with his head in his hands, hunching in his ratty leather coat, “I need help…” Men like Jack use him and leave him all the time. How is this going to be different? He pushes his fingers into his curls. A little louder, “I fucking…need help, okay?”

 

Jack hears shouting and a crash from the building above. He leans over to look up at the window from which the commotion is emanating. That’s gotta be the place. He’s just about to get out of the car when the kid comes storming out into the street with his duffel bag and…fuck. A guitar case. That’s right. He smiles to himself. Maybe he can do something with Ollie’s old guitar. It’s just gathering dust in the basement.

Gabriel doesn’t get in the car. He slumps down on the curb with his gear, disappearing from Jack’s view. But Jack hears his voice. Hears him say he needs help. So do two uniforms. A little black woman and a big white guy, who have come walking briskly up the sidewalk, probably drawn by Jack’s illegally parked vehicle. Jack steps between them and Gabriel, just as the man opens his mouth to speak to him.

“Can I help you, officers?” Jack says, holding up the leather case containing his ID and badge.

“Oh, Detective Morrison,” the woman says, looking startled. She hadn’t needed to see his ID. Jack is something of a legend around the precinct. “I—do you need any assistance, sir?”

Jack smirks. “With the kid? No, I’ve got it handled. But you’ve got a drunk and disorderly up there you might want to look into.”

Jack points to the open window, from which shouting and carrying on can still be heard. More voices, now. It sounds as if some neighbors have gotten involved.

“Yes, sir,” the woman says, nodding briskly.

Her partner nods to Jack, too, and the two of them head for the door Gabriel came out of.

Jack lays a hand on his shoulder. “Come on, mijo. Let’s get out of here.”

“Please…please don’t call me that right now. I can’t handle that right now.” Gabriel curls into himself, hands over the back of his neck as he whines softly.

He takes a few deep breaths, listening to the cops upstairs through the windows. His roommate shouting, the sound of glass shattering before the cops are shouting too. Flinching a bit, having been on the receiving end of Max’s temper for three years now.

“Okay. Yeah. Let’s just…go.”

He rises, docile for the moment as he lets Jack nudge him into the car. Rummaging in his little box of studs. Pulling the flesh tones out of his ears to slip in rings and studs. Staring out the window quietly as he tugs on the hoop through his lobe. Rubbing at the studs in the curve of his right ear. He flinches again, sinking further down, looking away when they yank the handsome, lanky, slightly-older man down the steps of the apartment and down the street, shouting obscenities. Glad that Max is too drunk to see him in the front seat as he’s hauled off. Fucker. There’s a bruise blooming across his chest and one starting to ache on his cheek where Max clipped him. He props his boots up on the dash once again. The guitar in the back seat and his duffle held tightly in his arms on his lap. What little cash and clothes he could throw together along with his jewelry and it’s all he has left in the world.

Jack doesn’t call him that right now. He doesn’t say anything. Just smokes another cigarette as he drives, mostly to let the kid know it’s ok if he wants to smoke. He’s realizing with a heavy, aching feeling in his chest that he’s all Gabriel has now, and that the kid hates him for it. Stuck in a living hell with some dirty old man who took him home and fucked him.

He turns off the exit before the one that takes him home, and they pull into a parking lot outside a place called Little Lulu’s, a sort of kitschy, 1950s-style diner. They make good burgers and shakes and as the the sign outside proclaims, breakfast all day.

Jack doesn’t ask the kid if he’s hungry. He knows he is. He just gets out of the car and Gabriel follows him. A red-haired waitress named Callie leads them to a turquoise-vinyl booth. She sets down huge, laminated menus and glasses of ice water as she enthuses about the specials. Jack asks for black coffee and thanks her with a dazzling, blue-eyed smile, which dissolves the moment she’s gone.

“Get whatever you want,” he says gruffly, not looking at him.

He can’t look at him. Can’t bear to to see that trapped, terrified, angry resentment in his eyes. So he picks up his menu and pretends to read it, thinking about the bottle of whiskey in his nightstand and the taste of the barrel of his gun.

Gabriel doesn’t look at Jack, either. Expecting pity. Expecting smug superiority. He knows what he wants to eat. Been here a couple times before, at 3am, drunk and a little high and tucked under someone’s arm like a pretty accessory. He fusses with the laminated menu, mumbling his order for a bacon cheese burger with fries and a vanilla shake, then slumps a bit, frowning at the scars over the backs of his knuckles.

He gives a resigned sigh. “So, what now? A cell? Some…halfway house, or what ever the fuck they’re calling them now?”

He starts to organize the sugar and sweetener packets in the holder with an almost obsessive intensity, just so he won’t have to look at Jack. His cigarettes burn in his pocket but he’s only got so many now and no income to buy more at the moment. Not unless he can move around, find a new spot to set up and work from. Find some new suckers. The idea is exhausting and makes him feel used and tired and angry at himself all over again for falling for a pair of goddamn blue eyes. His fucking death is going to be blue eyes and calloused hands and a husky voice. Fuck.

“I told you if you came back, we’d go home. That means it’s home for you, too,” Jack says wearily, watching the kid play with the sugar packets. He pulls the ash tray to the center of the table and lights a cigarette, staring into his black coffee as the smoke curls up and whirls around his head. “I know you hate my house, but it’s a fucking place to live where you won’t get beat up or have your shit stolen. All you have to do is follow the rules. It’s not a bad deal.”

“…I don’t hate your house.”

What he hates is that he’s sullied it. Left his greasy marks all over it and Jack just keeps trying to drag him back like he matters. Sullen, shoving the now organized by brand and size sugar holder away. Spinning the salt and pepper shakers around in his fingers like a trained cup-game hustler. Twirling and flipping and clicking them lightly on the table before he shoves those away as well. He fishes in his coat to pull out his zippo he’d managed to wrangle out of Max’s greedy hands. Flipping it open and shut slowly to keep his hands occupied. Glad when the waitress circles back with his shake and tells them their food will be a bit longer. Glad for anything that keeps him from looking at Jack.

Like he cares. Like Gabriel is something that’s worth keeping around. He’s going to hate when the other shoe actually drops. There’s a reason he never got adopted out of the system. No one likes angry young survivors. They liked them soft and eager and bright-eyed. He learned that with his first fuck.

Jack finally makes himself look up at the kid. There’s dark-purple bruise on his angular cheek. He wears it well, god damn his beautiful face. He knows he’s got a matching bruise darkening up between his eyes and it doesn’t look nearly so good on him. He wishes he didn’t care. Wishes he didn’t want the kid to want him. Wishes he didn’t still taste that sweet, honey-soft mouth in his. Wonders if he’ll ever stop tasting it.

“Who was that guy who hit you?” he asks, turning his eyes back to his hash browns and scrambled eggs. “And why were you living with an asshole like that, anyway.”

The smell of Jack’s cigarette gives him a craving shake. Knows how it smells and tastes on the older man. He’s tempted to steal one, just to taste him again. It’s the only kiss he’ll get, judging by what Jack sad this morning. Biting deeply into his burger when it hits the table. Hunched across from him. A punk kid in tattered leathers and piercings and the ruggedly-handsome cop. What an image.

He finally gives in. “Maximilien. Drummer for my—our band.”

That tells Jack literally nothing, but he knows everything he needs to know and more about that fucking walking pile of shit, anyway. He just wanted the kid to talk. He drops it. Lets him finish his food in silence. But he types a text to the Desk Sergeant telling him some uniforms are about to bring in a perp. Maximilien Fabron. History of violence. Real scumbag. Don’t rush him out of holding.

He thanks the waitress, pays, and they get back in the car, all without looking at each other. He watches Gabriel from the corner of his eye, huffing with youthful petulance as they make another stop that isn’t the house. This time it’s the grocery store. Jack wants to cook steak tonight and he’s sure the kid needs some things. He grabs a cart as they walk in. Gabriel’s eyes dart to and fro, tense and cagey.

“You don’t have to follow me around,” Jack says. “Go grab whatever you need and come put it in the cart. And don’t steal anything.”

Gabriel gives him a side-eye glance, full of suspicion and wariness, shuffling in his boots before he takes a step back, like he’s testing a tether. Then another.

“I—” A scowl and he stuffs his hands into his pockets, tries not to look like he’s been misplaced amid the throng of fairly put-together families and couples. “I…uh. Yeah. Ok…thanks?”

He snags a carry basket, shuffling a bit further away, then ducking into the milling crowds. People parting around him like water before the prow of a boat. He ends up in the personal care aisle, Eyeing body-wash and conditioner and a slightly guilty glance at deodorant. He doesn’t even look at the foam and aftershave. Already planning on using Jack’s again. Like Lucky Strikes and amber musk, it was one of the few things he was ever going to get out of the man again, so he might as well.

Bitterness and frustration continue to eat at his heart as he stares at a display of nail polish and lipstick. Side-stepping a pair of giggling coeds who eye him with flushed whispers. Normally, that’d give him an ego boost, but he moves on before he gets too wistful and either does steal something, or tries to sneak it into the basket, only to have Jack take it out and say something unsavory, and make him die of shame from having the handsome, older man call him out that way. He does slip a body lotion into the mix. Something with honey in it, that he likes the smell of and hopes Jack doesn’t give him too hard a look over it.

Jack has a system to maximize efficiency and minimize time spent shopping, which he loathes. He heads straight to the butcher to get his center-cut peppered bacon and two big porterhouse steaks. Vegetable section for mushrooms, potatoes, and pearl onions, fruit section for apples, peaches, and oranges, then the dairy section for milk and butter. Then he heads up and down the other aisles quickly gathering a few other necessities, till he reaches the cereal aisle. Kids like this shit, right? He grabs Cocoa Puffs and Fruit Loops, figuring one or the other will do. Taking a similar scatter-shot approach in the snack aisle, he grabs potato chips and corn chips, as well as a package of chocolate bars.

He happens to turn down the cosmetics aisle, where he spots the tall, rangy kid lingering in front of a display at the other end. He hangs back, not wanting to embarrass him or make him uncomfortable picking out the things he wants. He watches with almost tender affection as the gorgeous boy looks longingly over the shiny, Crayola-colored cosmetics, and ignores the way two young ladies are ogling him, then strolls away around the corner into the personal care aisle. Jack bypasses that aisle and meets the kid in the next one.

“You sure this is everything you need?” he says, transferring the few items the boy has selected from the basket into his cart. Gabriel smirks at the package of chocolate bars and two boxes of sugary cereal. Jack runs a hand self-consciously through his white hair. “I don’t really know what you like to eat, so I just grabbed…a bunch of things.”

Checkout goes quickly, being the middle of a weekday. Jack asks the cashier to add a carton of Lucky Strikes, then turns to the kid. “What’s your brand? May as well grab a carton now.”

Gabriel doesn’t have a favored brand. He rolls his shoulders,” Just…add another pack of strikes.”

Jack corrects and has the cashier add another full carton. Gabriel is surprised and glad when Jack doesn’t even check anything he picked out. A silent sigh of relief as the few cosmetics are slid past without a second glance. He has no idea the older man saw him mooning over lipsticks and polishes. He lingers near the bagging area, watching, noting a few things that clearly aren’t for Jack and he feels a flush fall over his cheeks and shoulders. Snacks and easy to eat foods, things that Gabriel could presumably grab and run off with, or sit at the table and chew through.

He does dutifully load the little cart with their haul. Not even sure why he’s behaving himself so well right now. Something about the way Jack is looking at him. This lingering, almost warm expression he can’t place his finger on the pulse of. It makes him want to be better. Makes him a little proud he hadn’t pinched that nail polish like he’d wanted to. Empty pockets on this trip. He does steal a pack of the Strikes once they’re paid for, though. Tucking them into his coat next to his lighter. Making sure Jack’s carton is safe in one of the other bags.

Jack smiles to himself, noting that Gabriel has apparently adopted his brand of cigarettes. There’s something irresistibly sweet in the idea. The drive home is silent, too, but it feels…better somehow. The kid helps without an attitude and they manage to get his gear and the groceries into the house in one trip. He hangs around the kitchen, looking like he doesn’t know what to do while Jack puts things away.

“The guest room isn’t very comfortable,” Jack says, as he’s closing the fridge. He opens the cabinet and picks up the cereal boxes. “We used to take in recovering addicts, so it was designed to stand up to abuse, not to accommodate guests. The bed is basically a twin mattress on a steel frame, like they used to use in hospitals. You can sleep…wherever you want, though.”

His pale cheeks flush and he turns away to stow the cereal in a cabinet. A few hours ago, he’d had his tongue and hands all over every inch of that silky, honey-brown body. Why the fuck is he so awkward now? But he knows why. They just fucked this morning and he’s already aching to feel him and taste him again. The desire is intensifying into need. He takes a breath to steel himself and goes on unpacking the groceries. It’s too early to start dinner, so he figures he’ll take a nap. Give Gabriel some time alone to get settled.

He follows him upstairs and sets the bag containing his purchases on the bathroom counter. Then he reaches into his pocket, where he’d put the thing he’d managed to purchase without the kid seeing.

“I…thought you might…like this,” he mumbles. “But I don’t know a lot about this stuff. Anyway, here.”

He draws out a bottle of shimmery, metallic, royal-blue nail polish, the exact color of the streaks in the kid’s hair and that lip paint he keeps wearing, and sets it on the counter, then quickly turns and strides off to his bedroom, feeling like an absolute idiot.

Gabriel stares at it. Turning the same polish he’d considered stealing over slowly in his fingers. The shimmering streaks of blue gleam in the glass bottle. It takes him an hour to paint and dry his nails before he crawls back up the steps. Peering awkwardly into the cracked bedroom door. Staring at the broad, scarred back. Gnawing his lip as he does so. Creeping in, he pads bare footed to the bedside.

Hovering…leaning in, curls brushing Jack’s cheek before he kisses the edge of his mouth. “Thank you, daddy.”

Can’t say it to his face, coward that he is. Creeping out again and settling on the sofa to pick at his guitar; a white-wood beauty, silver and mother of pearl inlay shaped like a sugar skull. Smoking a Strike as he scowls at his hands, staring at the blue glittering on his nails, thinking how handsome Jack looks asleep…

He’s so fucked.


	4. Chapter 4

Jack emerges gradually from a heavy sleep, to find himself still in a dream, the sweet melody strummed from Olivér’s guitar trickling up the stairs to caress his ears, lift him gently from his bed, call him down to his beloved. The sound tugs on his chest, pulls him to the door, then to the top of the stairs, where he stands listening. He knows he won’t find Ollie there, but the illusion is too poignant, too achingly beautiful to shatter yet.

He feels tears rolling down his cheeks and brushes them away, suddenly angry. How dare that fucking kid do this to him. Drive the knife into his most raw, vulnerable spot and twist till it hurts so much he can’t breathe. He swallows it. Drives it back down into the black pit where it belongs. Jack’s grief isn’t Gabriel’s fault. After a moment, he composes himself and walks downstairs.

As he passes by into the kitchen, his eyes linger on blue and black curls and the little trail of smoke from the couch, where Gabriel is seated with his guitar. The kid doesn’t acknowledge him and he’s grateful for it. He couldn’t trust his voice right now.

He starts a pot of coffee and goes to work washing the mushrooms and onions, starting them sautéing, and salting the steaks. He sets a cast-iron pan to heat and adds a drizzle of oil, then places the thick, red cuts of meat searing on the black iron. He’ll call him in if he has to, but the savory aroma wafting up from the mushrooms and onions should be enough to entice the kid into the kitchen.

Gabriel hadn’t noticed him. Too wrapped up in his head and the music and…well… _Jack_. Laid out on his back when the first smells curl over him and he’s plucking through Wayward Son. His stomach cramping sharply at the scent of protein and butter and something savory. Snarling his fingers in strings before he smooths the melody out. Feet beating a slow tune, Behind Blue Eyes falling off the strings. Caught in the soulful sound of wood and steel he loves so much. Punk or not, electric didn’t have the heart.

He wants to crawl into the kitchen. Sit at the table…hell, he wants to curl up but Jack’s feet and rest his head on his thigh. Get those big hands to pet him. Just…touch him. It’s fucked up and terrifying and a little frustrating. He doesn’t get…why? Why one old cop got him wrapped up this way.

Gabriel’s still lying on the sofa when the steaks are done searing, but the guitar has gone silent. Jack regrets this a little, but maybe the kid drifted off. Probably needs some rest. He sets the table with glasses, silverware, and the nice, cloth napkins he never has a reason to use. He plates the steaks with the sautéed mushrooms and onions, fills the glasses with iced tea, and then goes to the living room.

He isn’t asleep. Jack taps the back of the sofa, says dinner is ready, and goes back to the dining room to sit down. He waits till the kid sits down before he begins eating. Common courtesy. The steak is perfect, and that fact alone cheers Jack up considerably. He’d always been a traditional kind of man that way. Mood easily influenced by his stomach.

“I’m glad you liked the polish. It looks…good,” he says, keeping his eyes on his food, aided in conversation by the meal, just like at the diner earlier. But not much. He tries again. “Heard you playing. It was…I mean, if you wanted to play some more later, I wouldn’t mind.”

“I do like it. Uh. Th—thanks.”

It’s one of the first to come from him. Chasing his food around his plate almost viciously. Eyeing the steak on Jack’s plate even as everything on his own disappears in rapid order. Clearing his throat as he nurses his tea. Nose wrinkling a bit at the taste. Cold sweet tea? It’s something, so he sips it. Feet tapping on the floor, jittery. Domestic, this is so domestic. He…likes it. Fuck fucking…

He tries again. “It’s not the stuff I normally play. But I figure blaring Anti Flag while you were sleeping wouldn’t be too kind.”

Jack laughs out loud. He can’t help himself. A warm, genuine laugh that crinkles his blue eyes and eases the firm line of his mouth into an engaging smile.

“Fucking punk rock,” he says, as he takes their empty plates to the sink and comes back with mugs of coffee and the ashtray. He lights a cigarette and lays the pack and lighter on the table, where the kid can reach them. “I saw Propagandhi in a grimy bar in 1991. Before you were born, I think. We—uh, I still have a bunch of old records and tapes in the basement. I haven’t listened to any of them in a long time.”

“No fucking way! Propagandhi. Seriously? You?” Gabriel’s eyes go wide and he’s leaning over the table. Snagging a strike and lighting it by habit. Arm braced on the table top, near gaping. His lips curl into a huge-ass white grin. Dark eyes almost amber-brown with excitement. “I’ve only heard a few of the cut records. Some of the shit people recorded from club plays. Shitty but damn, that band had some sound.”

Gabriel melts a bit more. Swaying in closer, hungry for more attention, for more stories. Music is his passion, his soft, beating heart somewhere under the bitterness. He licks his lips, trying not to chew the filterless cigarette. The taste is cloying and he wants to kiss him. Because oh, that smile. That’s an expression on the detective.

Jack blinks, startled by the sudden change in the kid. He hadn’t expected such an energetic and positive reaction to anything, let alone a passing comment on his ancient punk-rock phase.

“Yeah,” he says, almost apologetically. “The stereo in the living room has a record player. I guess, if you wanted…we could go through the boxes and see if there’s anything you want to listen to.”

Jack unlocks the basement and Gabriel practically bounces down the stairs after him. He moves a couple of boxes down from the shelf till he finds a large one marked “Jack’s Misspent Youth” in Ollie’s handwriting (a joke of his husband’s about his taste in music). He takes it down and tears off the tape.

 Go ahead,” he says to the eagerly pacing boy. “Just, uh…don’t laugh at my old leather jacket, ok?”

He stands back and watches, heart beating a little faster, breath a little strained, as Gabriel’s eyes and face light up. He puts his blue-polished hands almost reverently on the old, faded record covers, worn at the edges but lovingly cared for. Then Jack’s old leather jacket comes out. Still bearing the safety pins, steel studs, and sewn-on patches. Jack turns his head, flushing with embarrassment at the huge grin on the kid’s face as he holds it up.

“I wasn’t always an old man,” me mumbles, looking at the floor, shifting his feet, but smiling as the memories wash over him with the familiar scent of the leather.

When jack looks back again Gabriel is already wearing the battered jacket. The smell of alcohol and cigarettes and clubs. Salt-musk and old leather. He loves it. It’s slightly too thick in the arms but it sits comfortably heavy on his shoulders. Glittering blue nails carefully sorting through records, stroking equally-faded letters and album art. Muttering to himself. Humming snatches of some before he crows over a particularly rare find. Then he digs out a photo of Jack in his youth, sepia around the edges from age.

“Holy _fuck_ …”

He’s exactly the sort of guy Gabriel would have—he swallows. Dry throated, dry mouthed. Wishing he had his lipstick to leave a print on the picture. There’s too much stuff here for just Jack’s life. Too much hidden like bad memories. He wants to tear some of it up, like he has any right to make a claim. He wants to pack it up. Ignore this hidden gem. Instead he keeps digging, breathless and wide-eyed in Jack’s coat.

Jack carries the box upstairs and carefully wipes down the record Gabriel has chosen. As the first, crackling snarls pop through the speakers, the kid looks at him and grins. His big, brilliant smile lights up his dark-brown eyes, radiating youthful energy and excitement. The music is earsplittingly loud and Jack doesn’t give a damn. This is the happiest he’s felt in years. Gabriel turns his attention back to the box of his things, so Jack slips into the kitchen to take a moment.

His heart had nearly stopped when the kid pulled on his old leather jacket. Seeing the relics of his past life treated with such tender, intense interest plucks a chord deep in his soul. He’s been living alone for ten years. Letting himself grow older and colder. Hoping that letting his soul freeze over will numb the pain. But it hasn’t. It’s just made him old and bitter.

The kid is doing something to him. Something painful and raw, like ripping open old wounds so the scar tissue can be cut away. He leans against the wall and closes his eyes, feeling the shouted vocals and growling, tube-amped guitars shake through the plaster. This…maybe this will be good for him.

Gabriel has no idea for once. Guileless in his manipulation. Snarling along to the music with a fierce smirk. Dragging his guitar back into his lap. Learning the frets and laughing when he fucks them up. Guitar set aside, sprawled on his stomach, sliding his fingers over the covers. Shouting for Jack to come help him sort the vinyls. He doesn’t know some of these! He wants stories and to know who was where when and did Jack see them play?

Jack goes back into the living room and sits on the floor with the kid. He turns the music down but just enough so they don’t have to shout. He picks up the photograph that had made Gabriel smile in the basement.

“Well, this is a picture of some handsome guy who kind of looks like me,” he says. “That was outside CBGB. Bad Brains was playing. That other guy was my roommate. We went to a lot of shows together. That was back when the whole scene was still kind of kicking off. Shit got…rowdy. I actually got arrested once.”

Jack smiles wistfully and sets the photo aside, digging deeper into the box. He pulls out a broken drumstick and hands it to the kid.

“This is from a Bad Religion show. It’s a piece of Pete Finestone’s drumstick, which hit me when it broke.”

Arrested? Gabriel leans into his lap, half draped. Like this is his band crowded in a dingy apartment, drunk and high on marijuana and life. Laughing about how far they’d go, when he and Max were not on the outs with each other.

Caught by blue fucking eyes again.

Blue.

It was always blue. Like oceans and open skies…like freedom. Real freedom, not the fucked-up bullshit version. And Jack is blue eyes, more blue than the paint on his nails or the streaks in his hair and so much more blue than Max had ever been. He wants—he wants to knock the blue out of Jack. Shake him. Ask where the punk went and if the world killed him, too.

He smiles instead and pulls out another vinyl, with his heart in his throat screaming to a song he doesn’t know yet. “Tell me about this one?”

Jack laughs, a little flustered by all this attention. A little thrown for a loop. This part of himself…he hadn’t even connected the dots between his youthful rebellion and Gabriel’s. Never thought for a second that the kid’s punk thing was anything more than a skin. A way to look tough.

“This one, you wouldn’t know.” He handles this album cover with particular care. “Split Lip. All-female punk band. They got really popular locally, even cut a record, but Lydia—the lead singer-guitarist—left and it fell apart. She was a raging beast on stage, you can’t even imagine. You’d forget she was five-foot-two and weighed about ninety pounds because her voice and her guitar were so…huge, you know? But it’s fucking rough for women. It was worse back then, since there were so few in the punk scene, so that made her visible. Made her a target. She’d get felt up by club owners and harassed by guys in other punk bands. Then her girlfriend was sexually assaulted at a show and she fucking had enough. She’s a professor of Women’s History at SUNY, now. We’re still friends, but…we haven’t talked in a long time.”

He sighs and shakes his head, with another wistful smile.

“We were friends since high school. I’d hang around after shows when I could, to make sure she was safe. She used to call me the only gay punk in New York City. That was just her way of being affectionate, though. I was never really all-in. Then the thing happened where I got arrested. My mom bailed me out and…after that, I joined the Marines.”

Jack realizes he’s been talking way too much and his face flushes with color. “Anyway, that’s all—ancient history. Sorry for rambling.”

“The Marines huh? Dress-blues and bloody red stripes. Sharp cut.” Deadly, and sharp edges. He thinks Jack cut something important on those sharp edges. When did his last bit of punk die? He steals the album back with reverent hands. He can think of so many girls who need to hear this. Shifting to switch the records, brightening as her growl floods the room. He boldly flops over Jack’s lap, belly down. Stretched over his thighs almost determined. “Lesbian Punk Queen. Fuck yes. It’s so fucking sad, though…I bet listening to her live was amazing. Come on. Why’d you stop talking?”

There’s a warm, heavy kid in his lap again. Flopped over him like an entitled housecat and god it feels so good. It takes Jack a minute to stop his stomach flipping around and get his brain back in order.

“I guess…I didn’t think you’d be interested. Old sellout like me, telling you how it was in the good old days. Yeah, it was amazing to see Lydia perform live. But after she left and all that shit hit the fan, I couldn’t stomach the scene anymore. I never fit in with that crowd, anyway. I was too blonde and athletic and all-American. Looked like a fucking narc, no matter how much eyeliner you put on me.”

He dares a touch. Resting his hand on the kid’s back. Not quite a caress, but close.

“Mom always wanted me to be a Marine like dad had been, so I was. Then I saw how it was in other places. Shitty third-world countries where the water was poison and children were dying of starvation and neglect. Then I got…well, I was captured and interrogated by enemy combatants. Picked up some real scars. The whole punk-rock rebellion thing lost a lot of its flavor after that. Besides, after you’ve shot enough men for the good of the USA, you can’t ever really call yourself a punk again. Then I met—”

Jack’s voice hitches on his husband’s name again, still unable to let the kid hear it. His most dear and precious thing.

“I met someone after joined the force. He was working in the juvenile division and I was on vice. He always wanted to make a difference. Do something that helped people. He convinced me we could. Kept on believing and pushing me to do the right thing. The job never calloused him like it did me. I don’t know, maybe I never stopped thinking I could make a difference. A cynic is just a disappointed idealist, anyway.”

He’s been stroking the kid’s back without realizing it. Petting him as if he is, indeed, a big cat.

“No, a cynic is a punk without a cause. Idealists are for the birds. Punks work to get shit done. Even if we’re just so obnoxiously loud we can’t be shut up with bullhorns and guns.” Gabriel shrugs, arching. Glee and desperate hope. He doesn’t bring up Jack’s service again. Or the now very real (former?) partner. You didn’t bury the living. He rests his cheek close to his thigh and returns to examining the vinyl cover. “Besides, I think that’s stupid. You don’t have to be dark-haired to be punk. Why not blonde? Fuck the man and the societal perceptions including our own.”

He wants to drag Jack to his clubs. Take him back to smoky venues, soak him in the scene again. Cozy up under his arm and sing themselves hoarse, drink till they laughed and more. Suck him off in the bathroom…fuck in the crowded side hall.

“Yeah, and I’ve seen what all that noise gets you,” Jack says, a little bitterly. “You really want to get shit done? Put your ass on the line for your punk ideals? I’ve got something you could—” he catches himself. This is not the kid’s job and it’s dangerous. Real life dangerous. Not fucking around with sit-ins and protest ballads and jerking each other off about how much you pissed off ‘the Man.’ He’s not going to let this child get killed for his personal crusade. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe you and your friends make enough noise, someone will hear you. I hope they do, anyway.”

“We could. We fucking will, dammit.” Gabriel wants to hit him and it’s a bit glorious because it’s the same way he’d throw a punch at someone, because they differ on opinions not on the principles. Because Jack’s one of them despite the badge. Has been one of them, gets to say shit like that and actually mean it.

Jack smiles. It’s so good, just talking and touching him like this. Makes him feel a spark of something. Like he’s alive again. It burns low and aches so beautifully, deep in his chest. He slides his hand up into those baby-soft curls, tugging and twining them around his fingers, unable to resist any longer.

Gabriel laughs, a little too brightly, a little desperate. Shaking his head, twisting under his touch. But his laugh coils into a soft gasp, feather-light, as calloused fingers tug his hair, making him whine low in his throat, expression shuttering as he arches a little, head back and chest down.

The music is pounding in Jack’s skull and Gabriel is so close and bright and beautiful. Honey-brown skin, coal-black eyes, soot-black curls, sparks of blue—too much blue to ignore—angry, beautiful, razor-sharp and whisper-smooth, all edges and pain and sweet, aching softness somewhere inside…

And suddenly he’s dragging him into his arms and kissing him like it’s all he knows how to do. Desperate, messy, bruising Gabriel’s perfect lips with the force of it, alive and on fire and drunk on the sound and scent and the taste of this impossible boy, filling his mind with brilliant lights and long-forgotten colors, burning like liquid chaos in his veins and electricity on his skin, and want so pure it’s need. His hands are working up under the jacket onto that velvet skin and his fingers are digging in greedily, possessively, trying to get as much of the boy against is body as possible.

“I want you—” he pants, pulling back only the bare millimeter he needs to slur out the words against Gabriel’s hot, wet mouth. “I need—need to be inside you.”

Gabriel gasps, breath stuttering as his hands dig into Jack’s arms. Nails biting through fabric as he’s kissed like Jack can’t fucking _breathe_ and maybe he can’t? How long has this man been drowning? Been tangled up and tied down in whatever the fuck happened in his past. This partner of his who was buried in boxes in the basement and in the lack of pictures hanging on the walls, like some dirty secret.

He whines as he tries to return the kiss passion for passion, but gets swept up and off his feet like the best sort of mosh pit. Battered, bruised, and aching but throbbing with adrenaline. Hips rolling, grinding into him, whimpering low as his hands slip up towards Jack’s neck to wrap his arms around him.

“Fuck…fuck, daddy, yeah. C’mon, give it to me. Let’s put a little punk back in you.”

He surges forward again to kiss him feverishly as the music winds up behind them, the voice of a badass fucking singer cut off in her punk prime, husking and growling. Cock achingly hard and he was regretting it this morning, but not tonight and he’s not letting Jack go until they’re both satisfied.

Jack is already tossing his leather jacket onto the floor and pushing Gabriel facedown onto it, yanking down his leather pants to wring his heavy, pierced dick. When he suddenly penetrates his tight hole with impatient, spit-slicked fingers, the kid’s head jerks backward and catches Jack in the lip, splitting it and drawing blood. Gabriel writhes and rolls his hips as Jack’s big fingers stretch him—but he can’t fuck him without lube. Jack curses and staggers to his feet.

“Stay,” he barks, shedding his shirt and pants on the way to the downstairs bathroom.

He peels off his underwear on his way back with the bottle of lube, already slicking his cock. Knees thud on the floor as he drops behind Gabriel, drizzling lube into the cleft of his ass, spreading him with both hands, shoving his pulsing, aching cock into him as slowly as the glorious high of frenzied desire and roaring, thrashing music will let him.

He grabs a fistful of the kid’s curls and pulls, making him arch his back harder. He’s sweating and bleeding from his mouth. Gabriel is bucking into his thrusts and spouting obscenities, wheezing punched-out growls like they’re fighting and they almost are. Fucking on the floor like dogs in heat. It’s too fast and hard and dirty in all the right ways.

Gabriel loves it in ways he shouldn’t. Drunk on how badly Jack wants him. The music rattles him apart just as much as Jack’s wild, impatient thrusts. Only improved when the big hand yanks his hair again, palm clamped tight over his hip as teeth sink into his shoulder so hard he’s sure Jack drew blood. Revenge for the split lip as he writhes and shouts under him, and it only adds to the cacophony of the music as he clenches down even harder. Groaning as he consciously works to milk Jack’s thick dick. Panting as he contracts and twists and bears down. Hips jolting back with each yank as Jack makes him fucking take it like Gabriel is a cock sleeve made just to fit his dick in. Bracing his knees in the carpet, face buried in the smell of old punk and new as he moans.

He gets one hand back to dig into Jack’s hip, raking his blue-painted nails over his skin as he yowls hungrily, “Fuck me harder, goddammit! Fuck me raw, daddy!”

Jack pulls his cock out almost to the head, then pauses, holding Gabriel’s hips fast with his strong, calloused hands, watching him writhe and push and whine, straining to get it back inside him, to get some friction or pressure, any kind of relief.

“Tell daddy how bad you want it, baby,” he growls, licking blood off his lip—his and the kid’s. “Tell daddy how bad you need a big, hard dick in your little pussy.”

Gabriel keens, pressing his chest and face harder into the lining of the leather coat. Rolling and twisting to try and free his hips but Jack’s hands aren’t budging and isn’t that fucking sexy as hell? He bites into his lip nearly hard enough to bust it open all over again. Noises dragged like pain out of his throat before he concedes.

Just like he had in the alley. Just like he had in the morning.

“So goddamn bad, daddy. Fucking…god I’m dying. I _need_ it. I need you to fuck me so hard daddy. Need you to fill me up. No one can fill me like you daddy, please don’t stop. Fuck the attitude right out of me!” Crooning nearly, thick and smoke-husky and hoarse from screaming along to the music. Spreading his thighs that much wider, displaying himself as he feels his body flutter around what little Jack’s given him. Digging his nails into leather as he rasps, “Can’t think. Don’t wanna feel anything but your big hard dick in my wet cunt, papi!”

The boy’s hot hole squeezes and tugs on Jack’s cock as his thighs come further apart, dropping his hips lower, tilting his ass upward to take him. Jack wraps his hands around his narrow waist and slams his hips forward, thumping against his round ass, almost bouncing back with each stroke as he pounds the kid with everything he has. His lungs are burning, leg muscles trembling, sweat pouring off his face and splashing the boy’s back. Jolts of delicious pleasure shooting up his cock, pressure building with each gratifying, hungry thrust.

Gabriel hurts and he likes it. Cock bobbing messily between his thighs. Begging Jack hoarsely to take what he wants. The words a garbled, sex-drunk slur as the man hunches over him.

“You feel so—ungh—so good,” Jack pants. “So fucking good…I can’t hold out—come, mijo, come now—oh fuck! Fuck!”

His words dissolve in a hoarse, snarling groan as his cock spasms and throbs, pumping the boy’s tight hole full to the brim, spilling slippery, milky fluid down over his heavy sack. Gabriel is trembling. Shaking through his own orgasm, caught by surprise as the feeling of getting bare-backed fills him with a perverse joy, this time around. As Jack’s thick cock flexes and pulses, hot and sticky come flooding him again. His sloppy half thrusts only make it slop out in thick globs around his shaft. Most of his panic ebbs under the assault he nearly begged for. Hips throbbing to remind him, and his shoulder is on fire.

He sinks into the stained leather, grunting huskily, “Papi is the best. Come-bred just by daddy.”

He flashes a kiss bruised, sloppy smirk over his shoulder, wiggling and rolling his hips back happily on Jack’s dick.

“Baby…fuck,” Jack breathes. “You’re gonna kill me like that, holy shit.”

He manages a dazed, fucked-out smile, dizzy and out of breath, heart running ragged in his chest as he lowers himself over the boy and stretches out right on top of his sweat-drenched body on the floor. He lies there stroking his ribcage and pressing lazy kisses into his damp curls. It gradually occurs to him that Gabriel said something about…being _bred_ by daddy. Fuck. It hadn’t even occurred to him to ask the kid if he wanted him to wear a condom. He doesn’t even own any. He hadn’t had sex in ten years and for a long, long time before that, it had only been with his husband. He feels like an asshole, but the kid doesn’t seem upset, so he takes it in stride for now.

“Come on, mijo, let papi help you get all nice and clean.” He pushes himself up and pulls Gabriel to his feet.

“Nooo I’m so comfortable. C’mon daddy,” Gabriel pouts, stumbling a bit, cursing under his breath as his back twinges. Ass convulsing, come leaking out in even larger drops. He presses in closer, trying to tug at his hand. He nuzzles, mouthing into his shoulder, his neck. Biting lightly, giving him an imploring look. So warm and good even with the bruises that hurt on his hips, turning purple nearly. Hopeful. Enticing. “Papi, please…just a bit longer?”

Jack smiles indulgently, hooks his arms around Gabriel’s thighs and hoists him by his ass onto the couch. He climbs over him and lowers the full weight of his solid, muscular body onto him, pressing him into the cushions.

“You happy now?” he laughs. He pushes his face into the crook of the boy’s neck and adjusts to slot their legs together, letting out a long, contented sigh. “You know, I’m an old man. I might doze off like this and you’ll be trapped till I wake up.”

“That’s—oh…oh, yeah.” Gabriel slides his arms around him. Dragging his nails lightly down Jack’s back, cooing softly as he relaxes, then shifting one palm to tangle in Jack’s hair. He floats a bit. Stretching luxuriously under his weight to enjoy the post-sex haze as the record scratches soft static, done playing finally. A nice white noise as he hums absently to it, crooning into his ear in a pleased husk, “No problems here, daddy. No problems at all. Wake you up in a few. Get some sleep with me huh, you old punk? It’s not dead…just sleeping.”

 

 

 

“So, you remember where the fire extinguishers are,” Jack says anxiously, earning an exaggerated eye-roll from his sleepy punk-rocker. “Yeah, well, it’s better safe than sorry. Where’s your key?”

Gabriel slaps his hand down on the night-table, making his key jingle on its keyring (an absurd acrylic heart filled with water and glitter and metallic die-cut confetti that reads “princess” in a curly font).

Jack nods again, sipping from his mug of coffee, which he has carried back up to the bedroom, despite telling himself he was going leave about six times. He can do this. He can go to the precinct. For eight whole hours. What’s the worst that can happen? Gabriel is not a child, he’s an adult. Sort of.

“There’s a list of delivery places on the fridge, in case you get hungry and—fuck me. Ok, I am officially a mother now, so I’m leaving for real. Bye, mijo.”

Jack kisses his forehead and actually manages to get out the door this time. Within a minute or so, he is headed off to work, for the first time in the few weeks the kid has been staying with him. And he’s totally fine.

Gabriel watches him, peering out the window, then goes downstairs to start his day. It takes him a few hours to get bored. Puttering around the house, digging up more stuff out of the basement. Setting up the vinyls and tapes neatly near the player with a faint smile as he organizes by names and then drops a record onto the spindle, carefully setting it, listening to the beat, bouncing a bit before he does something he doesn’t often get to do. Digging out a host of cleaning supplies from under sinks, he regards Jack’s neat but lived-in house and stomps into one room to set to work with a passion.

It’s presumptuous, maybe, but he’s got to have something to do. So he dances, twisting, singing along to the songs as he cleans the house top to bottom. Refusing to stop until its sparkling. Laying out some of the stuff in the cabinets with a determined frown. Because Jack always cooks. So, he starts to mix up dough and digs out some meat and vegetables he can mince. Something handheld, something savory.

 

Jack spends his first hour or two at the station pretending to be reading his case-files and obsessively looking at his phone. After that point, being panicked takes too much energy, and he settles down to look at his email. He’s got a message from his secretary saying that Sergeant Laredo called to say that Maximilien Fabron was booked for…a laundry list of charges. He’ll be in the can a while. Good.

He pulls into his driveway later that afternoon, having admirably resisted calling the kid all day. He catches himself approaching his own front door as he would a crime scene, and feels a little silly as he steps inside. The place is different, though. It smells different. There’s something being cooked? Can the kid cook? He looks around. Something else is different, but he can’t tell.

“Gabriel?” he calls out.

No answer, but there are sounds from the kitchen, so he rounds the corner. The curly-headed boy is leaning over something on the counter, apparently intensely absorbed in what he’s doing. It suddenly occurs to Jack what looks different about the house. Every surface has been cleaned spotless, as if by a professional service. He leans on the wall, smiling as he watches the kid stooped over his work.

“Hey, mijo,” he says. “The house…it looks amazing. You didn’t have to do that.”

Gabriel doesn’t hear him. Bud dangling from his ear.

He found an old Zune with a working battery and pre-war earbuds he swears to god. Hips swaying as he hums, dipping the empanada pastries out of the oil on the stove. Flour up to his elbows and some streaked over a cheek, a grin twisting his features as he bounces. Head bobbing as he twists.

“ _Mm mmm...so respectfully. I’m not a piece of cake for you to just to discard, while you walk away...With the frosting on my heart. So I’m taking back. What’s mine. If I’m just a piece of cake. I am just a piece of cake...But you’re just a piece o meat. You’re just a piece of meat to me_ —”

He twists on one foot and goes very still staring at Jack. A rolling pin in his grasp before he tucks it slowly in his elbow. Digging in a pocket of shorts, tight and leather and butter soft, but that is one of Jack’s shirts over it. Clicking off the music and coughing softly.

“Uh…welcome Home?” His eyes dart back and forth before he slowly sets the pin on the counter. There are a few jams there and a piece of dough he was rolling. A bowl full of fried dough pockets nearby. “I, uh…made dinner?”

Despite how impressed he is with this little domestic scene (and more impressed with Gabriel’s skintight leather shorts), Jack can’t help but tease the kid a little. He crosses his arms and smirks.

“So, uh…I didn’t recognize that song. Was that Minor Threat, or…?” He laughs at the kid’s indignant little huff and toss of his blue and black curls. “I’m just fucking with you. I said the house looks amazing, thank you. What’s all this? I didn’t even know you could cook.”

He reaches out to touch one of the little fried dough things resting in the bowl on the counter.

Gabriel swats his fingers with a measuring spoon, scowling a bit. “Hands off your dinner and sit your ass down. Don’t touch the empanadas, pendejo. Not quite done yet.”

He hip-checks the older man and opens the oven. Tugging out a skillet of vegetables he’d been keeping warm. Figures the old man wouldn’t mind some honey carrots, and then a platter of rice in a bake dish. He’d had to scrounge a lot of this. Spices, so many spices and he plates up with a swift efficiency and critical eye before he loads three empanadas on the plate and drops it on the table in front of Jack.

“And yeah, I can cook. I just usually don’t. You had some ground beef and shit about to go bad and some baked potatoes I chopped. We seriously need to expand your food choices, old man.” He flicks his towel back over his shoulder and digs his hands into the dough again. Flushed and not looking at Jack. “Its been a while, so just eat it while it’s hot. You can take some of the extra to work tomorrow.”

Jack sits obediently at the table, too stunned by this entirely new side of Gabriel to respond. He’s being spoken to like…like someone who is cared for in that tender, tenacious way that a partner is cared for. He stares up at the kid for a moment, blue-eyes wide with awe, then the aroma of the food on his plate fills his nostrils and it’s all he can think about. Turning a wary eye on the savory-smelling, golden brown little dough pockets on his plate, he plucks one up and takes a bite.

“Holy fucking shit, mijo,” he exclaims, mouth still half full. “This is…the best empanada I’ve ever had.”

He finishes the first one quickly and goes to work on a second, pivoting in his chair to watch Gabriel at the stove, still swaying his hips and round ass, and working those long, lean, dusky thighs, despite having taken his earbuds out. Where the fuck did he find a Zune, anyway? He vaguely recalls some relative sending them to him and Ollie as gifts, but he’d had no clue what Ollie had done with them. He finishes the third empanada with equal gusto, wrinkles his nose at the carrots, and tastes his rice.

“You made this rice with things I had here?” he asks incredulously. “You’ll have to show me sometime, cause I have never had rice this good.”

“S’just spices and a little broth.” Casually. Calmly. Almost aloof, but it’s ruined by the way his shoulders slant up with a pleased tip at the praise. Toes curling against the tiles of the kitchen floor. One tucking behind the ankle of its twin as he rolls out the dough one last time and with careful cuts and twists and swipes layers of jam into the dough and turns it into a neat little bundle. A tiny twist of dough into the oil before the actual empanada drops into the bubbling gold. Humming low in his throat as he adds, “Glad it’s good. Like I said. It’s been a while.”

One of his few good memories. Before time and so many other things stole it away, memorizing handwritten little cards. Fascinated, on a rickety stool in an even worse kitchen…but the smells. Ah, the smells that came out of that kitchen. He pauses, shivering, then shakes his head.

“Glad I can still cook good enough to beat your delicate white man sensibilities into submission and make you enjoy real food.” Not that the steak was bad,  but he was noticing a trend in, uh…lacking a huge variety of items. Basics, solid, easy to cook. “Seriously. The carrots are good! I make them with butter and honey and cinnamon dammit, at least try a bite? Unless its like, a fucking allergy. Then obviously, don’t.”

“Hey, I enjoy real food,” Jack retorts, and suddenly discovers how difficult it is to sound indignant with a mouthful of empanada. Gabriel has scooped three more onto his plate. “I was always…pretty ok at cooking. I’m just not used to anyone but me being around.”

He eyes the carrots as though he suspects them of having committed a minor crime.

“Honey and cinnamon?” he says doubtfully. “But carrots are supposed to go in salty things. Like stew. So they get soft and—oh holy shit these are delicious.”

Jack finishes the carrots, then his fifth empanada, and sits nibbling on the sixth. He’s pretty full now, but it tastes so good, he can’t help but want to eat more. Good god, what if the kid keeps cooking like this and Jack gets fat? He laughs to himself. The Morrison family genetics are famous for keeping their owners’ bodies fit well into their older years. And Jack is a devout exerciser. He runs ten miles every day before work and uses the weight room at the precinct three days a week.

“Oh, I heard from the desk sergeant about your roommate. Maximilien Fabron? They booked him for destruction of property, assaulting a police officer, drunk and disorderly, and indecent exposure. I guess the landlord confronted him about the shouting and his response was to urinate onto the living room floor.”

Gabriel tenses at the mention of his ex, placing the bowl of sweet empanadas on the table before finally folding to sit. Picking at his meal slowly, eyes on his food.

“Yeah, well Max never did do anything by halves. Funny though, landlord hasn’t cared about the shouting for years.” It was a little mystifying and angering that he’d chosen to care now. After Gabe had an escape. He tears apart a golden crust with strawberry jam inside it with milk. Bare foot hooked on the chair, expression oddly blank. “I guess he’s going to be busy for a while, huh?”

“Depends on what the DA’s office says,” Jack shrugs, observing the kid’s sudden discomfiture. “If he’s got priors it could be a while. You don’t have to worry about him, ok?”

Gabriel does not look comforted. He looks more anxious. Jack bites into the sweet empanada. It’s so good he makes a little involuntary sound of appreciation, but the kid doesn’t seem to notice. He sets it down and looks searchingly into Gabriel’s face.

“Gabriel, you can talk to me. I want to help. But I can’t if I don’t know what’s going on.”

“S’nothing.” Gabriel chases his food a bit more, scowl slowly tilting his lips down. The angry expression at odds with his pinched brow.

He’d broken Gabriel’s jaw, Gabriel kicked his ass and Max sat in a cell for a day before being released. He’s not sure what strings he pulls but it’s not his first or last time. God, he’s been so fucking stupid. Taking up with the blue-eyed smooth talker. He shoves away from the table, clearing the plates on absentminded autopilot. If he didn’t, Max would always leave the place a mess. Gabriel was all for anarchy but, ugh. Dirty floors and dishes… He gets started packing up food for lunch for Jack. Lips a thin line, shoulders tense again. “Good luck making it stick, _detective_. Max never sits in jail too long.”

The word stings Jack like a slap. The kid hasn’t called him “detective” since the night they got out Jack’s old records and fucked on the floor. When they’d fallen asleep on the couch together and Jack had woken up stiff and sore and…not alone. He feels it again now. The cold, alone feeling. But now that the kid has been melting and warming him, it hurts more than ever. Freezes him to his bones with an aching chill.

“I see,” he says curtly, rising from the table. “When you want to fuck, it’s daddy this and papi that, but the minute I try to…to give a shit about you, it’s back to detective. Ok. Have it your way, Reyes.”

Jack fills a mug with black coffee, grabs his cigarettes, and stalks upstairs to his bedroom.

Gabriel closes his eyes. Calls himself ten kinds of idiot and wishes he didn’t care as Jack’s foot steps recede. The sharp click of the bedroom door over head only cements it.

_God. Dammit._

_God fucking..._

Gabriel pauses, resting his arms in the counter. Wishes he could talk about shit like a normal fucking person. Wishes he wasn’t such an angry hardass for once because…well. Fuck Jack, too! Gabriel is fucking trying! He makes sure the food is packed. A package wrapped specifically for Jack’s lunch. He fiddles with the Zune as he retreats to the basement guitar and all. Jack made it pretty clear he wasn’t interested in his company. He’d rather not bring his ire down further being a noisy brat, as Max so kindly put it.

Jack shuts his bedroom door too hard, wincing a little at the sharp sound. As he’s taking off his jacket, he feels the hard edge of the rectangular gift box in his pocket and draws it out. Just a stupid little bauble he thought Gabriel might like. Black velvet dog collar with a line of royal blue rhinestones, that same color blue that’s in the kid’s hair and the nail polish he’d got him.

He hangs up his coat and changes into his customary black tank top and grey pajama pants, then sits in bed ignoring the news and staring at the box on his nightstand. It seems to be mocking him. Reminding him how much a fool he’s been making of himself with this kid who’s less than half his age and calls him _detective_.

He puts the box in the drawer and shuts it, sits there fidgeting uncomfortably for a while, then takes it back out and quietly opens the bedroom door. He doesn’t hear Gabriel, so he pads barefoot down the stairs. He’s not in the kitchen, either. He gets out a sharpie and writes “Gabriel” on the lid of the box.

As he’s setting it on the dining room table, he hears the kid’s guitar kick up down in the basement, fluttering through some gorgeous, ornamental chord progressions in a sultry flamenco style. Like his husband’s guitar is haunting his home in the most lovely, heart-piercing way. He drops the box onto the table and retreats quickly back up to his room. But he leaves the door open this time. He dozes off to the barely audible strains of that guitar that float softly up the stairs.

Gabriel dances like he hasn’t allowed himself to do for years. Twisting with the guitar like its his partner, to the sultry sounds of Spain and Italy and the Mediterranean…places he has always wanted to see. Dreaming big, of golden lights and glittering places until he was much too old to believe in fairytale adoptions and happiness. When he’d found the snarling scream of Anarchy and Rebellion and fallen hard and fast into the hard beats and hard guitars.

The basement smells like cigarettes—Strikes because he’s such a goddamn fool—and sweat and the music resounds like it’s a Cathedral. Echoing back at him like there’s a band of guitarists thrumming out the music along with him. He dances slow and fast and sweet and hard until he’s exhausted. Collapsing on a broken sofa that had likely been meant to be thrown out but got hidden under boxes. He slumps down, sweat sticking his curls to his bare skin. Naked as they day he was born, hugging his guitar tightly.

The Zune tells him it’s nearly four a.m.

He rises, leaving his guitar on the worn cushion and pads upstairs. Swaying up the steps, still vibrating with music, to slowly lean on the door to Jack’s room. Staring hungrily, longingly…but Jack just…they just kept frustrating each other. Was it even fair when Jack was so very good to him?

He steps back once, twice, shoulders heavy, before he pads down the stairs and curls on the sofa. Unaware of the gift in the kitchen. Hoping that Jack takes his lunch in the morning. He heard most officers didn’t get a regular meal. It’d be nice to know he didn’t go hungry, at least.

 


	5. Chapter 5

Jack is in a foul mood when he arrives at the precinct this morning. The rejection (in his mind) of his little gift and the fact that the kid had slept on the couch stung him, and exacerbated the cold, sinking feeling he’d had the night before. The feeling that the kid was just manipulating him. Playing at being sweet and submissive to get what he wanted, then doing whatever the fuck he pleased. A single thought rang in his head all the way to work and made his head throb: _Gabriel Reyes doesn’t give any more of a fuck about you than he had any of his pathetic old tricks._

“Hey, detective?” his secretary says, poking her head in the door. “Captain Amari wants to see you right away.”

Jack manages to smile as he thanks her, then goes reluctantly to the captain’s office.

“Come on in, Jack,” the petite, white-haired woman says. “Shut the door. How are you?”

Jack shuts the door and slumps into a chair. “Been better. Feeling my age these days, you know?”

“Well, you’re not looking your age,” Captain Amari says, with a playful smirk. “So at least there’s that. We need to talk about the Ogundimu case. Fabron’s attorneys called again this morning about releasing him. I’m going to have to do it unless you can give me something solid.”

“I need some more time, Ana,” Jack says, shaking his head wearily. “I know I can bust this thing open. You know I can do it.”

“Listen, Jack, if you say you can hand me a human trafficking ring, I believe you. But the federal prosecutor’s office is going ask for more than your word. Especially when it comes to accusing another department of being full of dirty cops. I’m only telling you what I have to—”

“Callahan and Mahoney were out of uniform,” Jack interrupts flatly.

Captain Amari sits blinking for a moment. “Will the kid testify to that?”

“I…I don’t know. I’m working on it,” he leans his elbows on his knees and rubs his hands together. “I think I can get through to him, but…I just need a little more time.”

Ana crosses her arms and regards her old friend thoughtfully. He looks tired, but better than he has in a long time. She hasn’t seen him this passionate about anything since his husband passed.

“Alright, Jack,” she says at last. “I can lose his paperwork for a couple of days. But you have to bring me something that solidly connects him to Ogundimu, or I’ll have no choice but to let him walk.”

Jack nods. “Thanks, Ana. I owe you one.”

“You owe me lots of ones,” she smiles. “Let’s not start keeping track now.”

 

 

When Jack returns home that evening, he lingers in his car for a few minutes, not ready to face the angry, sullen young man he’s almost certainly going to find. He sighs and drags himself out of the car and into the house. He made his bed, now he has to lie in it.

There’s a pot on the stove that smells like beef and salt and beer. A little note on the counter, laid where the pretty box had been: _I made you dinner. Didn’t know when you’d be home. I’m sorry._

The last part has been erased and rewritten like he wasn’t sure what he wanted to say for real. There’s music audible in the basement and Gabriel’s voice just under it. The stew is still hot and there’s a loaf of quick bread in the oven to go with it.

Gabriel, despite what had happened last night, was worried that Jack was genuinely upset. He just didn’t know how to talk about Max. Instinct had made him withdraw, step back and act like everything was just keen. Like there weren’t dark hands attached to Max’s strings and, sometimes he feared, his own. But he could get away anytime he wanted.

…Right?

He shudders, curling tighter with his guitar, playing softer melodies and tries not to think about how nice the collar feels wrapped around his neck. Wasn’t sure if Jack was meant to put it on him, but he couldn’t resist it when he went into the kitchen this morning, a little upset Jack let him sleep through leaving. He was going to make him…breakfast, something. Shit. But the blue is so nice and it's soft and near weightless on his throat. He ducks his head, smiling into the sheet of his hair and sort of hopes Jack likes dinner. He just figured he’d stay out of his way.

That’s what Max always preferred. No matter how much Gabriel apologized, he always ended up bellying back. So he’d just…wait for Jack to say it was okay to come back.

Instead of a fight, Jack finds a hot meal and Gabriel’s guitar playing drifting up from the basement. He picks up the hastily scrawled note with an unsteady hand. The dual gut-punch of sweet, simple, domesticity and guilt over what he’s doing to the kid is too much. He collapses into a chair at the dining room table and buries his face in his hands.

He can’t ask the kid to risk his life for this. But if he doesn’t, he’s pretty much signing is death warrant anyway. Fabron and Ogundimu will get their hands back on him and he’ll be as good as dead. The thought of that warm, brilliant, beautiful face, cold and grey and silent under a sheet in the morgue splits his chest with agony. There’s got to be a way to keep Gabriel out of it, or at least off the stand. He’ll think about that later. Right now, he needs to make things as right as he can with the kid. He stands up slowly, hangs up his coat, and goes to the basement door.

“Gabriel, come up here please,” he calls out, firmly but not unkindly. Then he sits down at the table gazing at the kid’s note and trying to breathe steadily.

The playing ceases. Gabriel pauses at the bottom of the stairs, unsure if he should keep the collar on or not. He’s managed to wrangle the shirt back on, skin slick from the humidity in the basement as he slowly trudges up the stairs. Hoping that Jack talking to him is a good sign. Max usually didn’t talk to him until he was ready to forgive and forget. And take what he wanted from Gabriel in return.

He gives a half grin, trying to play cool as he appears in the kitchen door. “Hey, old man.”

Not sure if he's still allowed to call hm anything else, but "detective" is clearly off-limits now. Not so sure about his name, or the affectionate “daddy” that wanted to slip off his lips. He cages it with his heart in his throat. Hunched like he’s expecting a strike, while trying to make it look like he’s completely fine.

He _is_ fine. He’s just fucking fine and he doesn’t care, not really, if Jack is just like—his eyes flick toward Jack’s hands as he steps into the kitchen then away. “S’up?”

The boy is wearing the collar. And also flinching like a whipped dog. Another one of those double gut-punches. Jack is taking a pretty thorough beating.

“We have to talk about Maximilien Fabron,” he says, figuring forthright is the only way to approach this. “I know you don’t want to, but we have to do it. He’s a bad man, Gabriel. I think you know it. And I think you’re in danger if he’s on the streets. My boss is already under pressure to let him walk. So, I…I need your help. I’m asking for your help.”

Gabriel’s breath hitches. Dark eyes widening, white around the edges. His steps carry him to the sink. He fills a glass with water, sipping it without tasting it. Braced on the basin, shoulders taut and slightly paler than he usually is. His nails drum on the metal, a quiet beat.

“That’s what…I’m here for, isn’t it?” Soft voice. So very soft. The collar feels like a lead weight now. He licks his lips because being proven right just tastes like ash this time. “I’m here because of fucking Max.”

Jack’s instincts snap into high alert. That tense movement, pale skin, soft voice. A storm is coming. He rises cautiously from his seat and steps up behind Gabriel, tracing his fingertips gently over his smooth shoulder.

“No, Gabriel,” he says, in a low, hoarse voice. “You’re here because of you. Because you’re not one of them. You’re just you, and you’re alone. But you don’t have to be. Let me in, Gabriel. Let me lo—”

Jack stops short, heart pounding in his throat. He had almost asked the kid to let him _love_ him. Jesus Christ. What the fuck is happening to him?

“Let me look out for you,” he says, correcting awkwardly. “I was supposed to arrest you, Gabriel. I had to fight my boss on it and finally she agreed to let me bring you here. I did it because you’re innocent. You’re worth so much more than this. Being pimped out and roughed up by a low-level scumbag like Fabron. Please.”

Gabriel flinches even more under his fingers. Voice brittle as thin ice over a rushing river. “Protect me? Fucking…really? Is that what we’re calling this now?”

His fingers tighten on the sink, shaking, and he wants to fight. His throat feels like he’s choking as his heart cracks in thick chunks. Fuck. Fuck! This is why he stopped…stopped caring. This is why he told himself to stop hoping! His heart just…steel and lead and flaked gold now. What’s left? Tears splash onto the back of his hands. Soft broken, noises trapped in his chest.

Storms, rages, screaming, violence. Jack could have handled any of those. He had been prepared for those. But for this…a broken, weeping child…he has no defense. Nothing to stop the arrow in its deadly trajectory into the center of his raw, wounded heart. He drags the boy into his powerful arms and crushes him against his chest. Gabriel’s legs go limp and Jack has no choice but to sink down to the floor, supporting him as the boy’s entire body racks with deep sobs. His pure, wordless, visceral pain draws tears out of Jack’s eyes, too. They roll down his cheeks and wet Gabriel’s hair.

“Mijo…mijo,” Jack breathes, burying his face in those dark, velvety, smoke and honey-scented curls. “Mijo, perdóname, por favor. I never wanted to hurt you. We’ll…find some other way to deal with those guys. Please forgive me, Gabriel.”

“I just wanted to sing.” It’s the one coherent sentence that manages to make it out of his broken sobs.

Like a long-wounded animal that has been limping along from open hand to open hand; getting struck each time until it’s finally stumbled as far as it can go. A shattered thing with a spirit glittering in equally shattered shards somewhere on the floor in some back-room deal. Worse than a bullet to the heart. Dreams cut slowly asunder.

He just lets Jack hold him, sobs soaking the detective’s shirt. The words, the apologies roll off him. He doesn’t even hear them anymore. Because he is going to die. Because he was a stupid kid, who took up with the first person who he thought actually loved him. Until it turned to poison and worse. Until Gabriel was thumbing through songs that he didn’t even feel the words to anymore. Until his fingers were numb and his performances lackluster.

All they did was fight now, Max hinting at awful, ugly things. Especially when Akande had just been and gone for ‘business’. Gabe had stuff stashed away. Hidden with various friends, the ones who were just as wary as himself of a man as rich as Akande trawling like a shrimper in their muddy waters and back alleys.

Jack sits there holding the wreckage of a young man’s life in his arms. His chest cracks and aches with Gabriel’s pain. He feels the chill creeping over him. The black pit opening to take them both. His heart reaches out for his husband, who he’d seen talk the light back into the hopeless, dead eyes of pregnant, fourteen-year-old drug addicts. What would Ollie do? What would he say?

Hoisting the kid in his arms, he staggers to his feet and carries him upstairs. Dinner forgotten for now, unimportant compared this. He lays him in bed and pulls the blankets over him, then goes to the closet to take off his shoes.

He gazes pleadingly at the picture of his husband.  _Sorry I’ve been fucking this twenty-three-year-old punk-rocker in our bed, honey, but I could really use your help right now._

The picture keeps smiling. Ollie keeps being gone. And Jack goes to the bed and climbs under the covers with the boy, wrapping him up in his arms again. Maybe there’s nothing he can say.

Gabriel curls slowly into Jack, resting his head against his chest. Tears still streaking his face and curls lank against his skin as he shudders through the silent sobs. Digging his teeth into fabric just to help muffle himself. Not wanting to make more noise. Max never liked it when he made noise

He digs his nails into his chest, probably leaving marks even through the shirt. Legs tangled in Jack’s as the night slowly descends in silence and splintered hearts.

As he holds his shattered angel on his chest, soft and warm and real and alive, Jack begins to feel that spark again. That bit of something that he hasn’t felt since Ollie died. Since he had someone to care about. Now…he has someone to care about again. Someone to fight for. The black hopelessness in the pit of his stomach is transforming into something else. Rage. Rage at the injustice, the cruelty, the senseless brutality of it all. The slow-kindled, righteous fury that turns good men into heroes.

“I can fight back,” he says quietly. “I am going to fight back. This is my last chance to do something that actually matters. To tear up a corrupt system from the inside. If I have to shoot every single dirty cop in this city myself, so be it. I’m not going to let these men keep hurting people. I’m not going to let them get away with hurting you.”

He cranes his neck down and presses a kiss to the kid’s forehead, then drops his head back onto the pillow and sighs. What’s the worst they can do? Kill him? Ha. Jack has never been afraid of death. Especially not now, with Ollie waiting on the other side. That makes him a very dangerous man. Jack may be an old dog, but he still has a hell of a bite.

Gabriel’s shaking slowly eases as Jack kisses him, as big hands gently stroke his back and hold him tight. The collar still feels like a lead weight. He whispers in a cracked, hoarse voice, “Ogundimu will kill you. If he doesn’t let Max do it.”

Tears still glittering on his lashes, hands refusing to be untangled from Jack. He can’t look at him as he rips open some of the black and bitter in his soul and spills it out like ink and tar all over the pristine sheets he’s already sullied once. Sullies by just being here. One more soul he’s going to drag down with him. Might as well give him something to chase and chew on until he chokes, too. Jack asked for it. Jack doesn’t care about Gabriel. Just cares about his justice, fucked up as it is, Gabriel tied up in there with it, somewhere.

“Or he’ll use you. Just like he uses everyone else.”

Jack takes a breath. Forces his heartbeat to remain steady. The kid said Ogundimu. By name. He’s in deeper than Jack had imagined.

“He wouldn’t have any use for me,” he says. “And he’s not going to get a chance to kill me. Not if you help me.”

He pulls Gabriel closer and presses his lips to his mouth, though it remains passive and the brown eyes keep staring off into nothing.

“You’ve been a fighter all your life. Don’t give up now, Gabriel. Hang on a little while longer for me. I’ll take these fuckers down and then we’ll…I dunno. Go to Europe, or something. Get out of this fucking city for a while.”

“Yeah…okay. Whatever you want.”

Gabriel lets himself be pulled into the kiss and tucked closer. Lets Jack shift him around until he’s sprawled on the scarred chest. His head pillowed over the strong, steady heart as his own thuds rabbit-fast between his ribs and in his craw. Begging to be set loose, to finally be free and dead and done. He’s going to go to jail, and Max and Akande will make sure he dies there. A tragic accident, he’s sure. Someone gets too knife-happy with the pretty prison boy.

“Whatever you say, papi. That sounds nice.” It does. A beach somewhere sunny and balmy with Jack watching him from under an umbrella while he gets to soak up the sea and the sun and play in the sand before he bellies up to Jack for kisses.

Fuck. The kid is going under. Diving deep into his layers of defense. Jack is going to lose him if he doesn’t do something quickly. He has to be firmer with him, but it kills him to think of it. Being hard with this wounded child. He takes a breath to steel himself. Sits up and holds the kid by his shoulders. He’s still staring into the middle distance, so Jack takes his chin in his hand and turns his face toward him.

“Look at me, mijo,” he says. Not quite his command voice, but close. Stern dad voice. “I know you don’t trust me, but you’re going to have to. I can’t help you if you don’t. I don’t say shit I don’t mean. I don’t make promises I don’t intend to keep, and I don’t leave anyone behind. You’re with me now, you understand? I am going to take care of you.”

Gabriel gives a start when he’s made to sit up. Chin held firmly so he’s forced to look into the blue eyes. Some of his hastily gathered calm struck down, yanking part of that rug out from under him anew. His heart constricts all over again and he can feel the fucking humiliating tears trying to build in the edges of his eyes.

His mouth opening and closing, heart thudding so hard he feels like he’s dying before he rasps, “I don’t…know how.”

And he doesn’t. He doesn’t know how to trust, how to speak frankly. Any emotion has to be dragged out clawing and kicking and screaming, if its not about music. He doesn’t know how to be cared for. To be wanted that way. And Jack…Jack is too good for Gabriel to even let him try. The hot, salty sting curls in fat drops down his cheeks and jaw again as he gives a shaky hiccup noise.

“I don’t know how.”

“Let me teach you,” Jack says, keeping the kid’s chin in his hand. “I know you’re scared and it’s going to be hard and it’s going to suck and sometimes you’re going to hate me. But I am not letting you go now, no matter how bad you kick and scream, so you’re going to have to deal with it.” He pulls him closer, just a little bit. “Gabriel? Do you understand me?”

“Y—yes sir.”

He feels exposed, even more so than when he’s being held down and fucked raw, as he’s held by the strong hand and pale-blue eyes. He can’t even look away. Like he’s locked in place, dark eyes blinking rapidly as the tears cascade slowly. Starting to taper off again as his heart and breath stutter between his ribs.

His hands flexes uselessly on Jack’s shirt as he whimpers quietly, voice breaking slightly, “I’m…I’m so scared.” He doesn’t know if he’ll be able to say it again. “I’m so scared. O—of Max…and. And Akande.”

This is progress. It’s small, but even one step is a giant leap with Gabriel. Jack is beginning to understand more about the kid now. He needs this. Needs to be restrained and given boundaries. Needs to feel held and directed psychologically as well as physically, in order to feel safe. So Jack maintains this exact position. Keeps the boy’s chin firmly in hand. Keeps his eyes locked on him.

“They can only hurt you if you don’t let me help you. Tell me why you are afraid of them, Gabriel.”

“I—I can’t.” He’s choking. He’s choking and he can’t breathe. He lifts his hands, curling them tightly around Jack’s wrists. Squeezing as he wheezes, “I can’t, I can’t, I—” he’s hyperventilating thinking of dark hands so careful but bruisingly tight over his shoulders. Bearing down on him along with that rich accented voice and the awful promises. Some of the papers…fuck, the papers! Akande would kill them both! He tries to kick out, tries to struggle free of his hold.

“Let me go fuck you old man ffffuck—ah! Fuck you. You don’t know what they’re going to fucking do to you! To me!”

“Shhh, mijo, it’s ok,” Jack says softly. “It’s going to be ok, I promise.”

His gentle tone belies his simmering rage, vision going blood-red as he imagines what must have been done to Gabriel to put him in this state of irrational terror. More importantly, what he will do to _them_. He will make them pay ounce for ounce in suffering for this boy’s torment.

“Whatever you think they’re going to do, you have to tell me so I can protect you. I am going to do everything I can, within the law or outside of it to make you safe.”

Gabriel can’t break free.

His vision goes white and grey at the edges, breath stuttering sharply as he whimpers, “They’ll send me away like the rest.”

He’s in full-body tremors. Rattling apart, nails digging into Jack’s wrist, his hands, scrabbling at him as the tears come hard and hot and fast.

“They’ll…they’ll—I don’t know. I don’t know where they all go. I just—I have papers. God, when they find them I’m going to fucking die. They’re going to leave me like they did Lily—” He twists like a scalded cat in his grasp once more. “Please, please just let me go! I don’t…they can’t…”

Jack pulls Gabriel in against his chest and holds him tight, mostly because he’s thrashing and fighting and Jack is afraid he’ll hurt himself. Lily…he’s heard that name somewhere. The mention of papers is something solid, at least.

“Gabriel, I know you’re scared,” he says, stern again. “But you will calm down and talk to me. Because I am telling you to do it. Right now. Get a hold of yourself and talk to me. What papers?”

Gabriel is rattling, pupils thin points and brown irises nearly amber with panic. His nails dig into Jack’s shirt when he’s embraced hard enough he can’t move any further. The hard, stern tone cuts through the ice-water panic and he nearly grovels against Jack.

“P—papers. Business papers. M—Max and Akande called it business but business doesn’t…doesn’t have ages and nationalities and I—I managed to steal…steal some papers. Work papers. I never read them, too afraid, but they came out of Akande’s briefcase. He—he keeps it locked to his wrist. Unless he was with Max or in his office.”

He twists in his grip weakly, head jerking as he sinks his teeth into Jack’s shoulder. Whimpering, hot breath fanning over Jack’s skin, before he hisses quietly into the mark he’s made.

“I…hid them. Hid as many of them as I could s—steal. Some are in my bag. In my makeup kit. Max would never touch my kit. He hhh…hated it, but Akande liked it, so he kept it stocked and he insisted I wear it when he visited. It was easy, plain sight and Akande would never question me keeping it close, or Max.”

Jack winces a little at the bite, and tries to ignore how it makes his heart beat faster, thinking of biting back, into that velvety, honey-brown skin and…fuck. Papers.

“The bag you have here?” He keeps his tone level and cool, so as not to alarm the panicking kid. “There are papers from Akande Ogundimu’s brief case here in the house?”

If this is true, they may not need Gabriel to appear in court at all. Particularly if these papers bear Ogundimu’s signature or Fabron’s.

“Yessssss.” Gabriel bites hard enough into his lip to draw blood.

He can’t speak anymore. Panic has his throat in a vice. He presses his cheek into Jack’s shoulder hard enough he can feel his skin bruising. He shakes like he’s freezing. Nails digging into his own arms as he tries not to sob. Fear. So fucking afraid. He’s said it. Jack knows. Jack will tell someone and Max and Akande will find out and he’ll be lucky if he’s left in a gutter with his throat slit.

Too much dope in his veins and eyes blank and just another OD or drug buy gone bad. The same cops that he nailed with his fist will get to laugh over his corpse, just like the rest of their department. Just like the rest of the world and Maximilien and Akande. He closes his eyes tightly, dry and burning because he doesn’t have any more tears left and his head aches. Pounding and he just…goes…slack. Hyperventilated into unconsciousness.

Jack gives a start when Gabriel slumps against him, alarmed by his sudden collapse. He speaks to him, shakes him gently, then lays him down on the bed. The blood on the boy’s mouth alarms him at first, but he finds the place where he’d bitten his lip. He checks his pulse and breathing, then carefully dabs up the blood and he pulls the blanket over him. He needs to get his eyes on these papers immediately.

Makeup case. It’s in Jack’s closet on the dresser by Ollie’s picture. He goes to the closet, switches on the light, and opens the case. He can’t see anything but makeup. Some of it looks expensive and fancy, in little gold-toned cases with embossed scrollwork. There must be a false bottom in the case. Smart kid.

He dumps everything out of the case and pries at the edges of the liner until some of it comes loose. Underneath, he finds a white sheet of paper, folded into quarters. It’s a thick, expensive stock with a satiny feel to it. He unfolds it and scans over the type.

He is looking at a purchase order for a human being. A human being. The tone is businesslike and frank, as if this is a normal thing and there is no reason to conceal it. He reads it again. Then a third time, with a dry mouth and a pounding heart, eyes alight with a keen, almost vicious spark.

“We got ‘em, Ollie,” he whispers to the photograph. “This is…better than anything the kid could have testified to.”

He pushes the liner back into Gabriel’s case and replaces the makeup. Keeping the paper he’s got with him, he goes to the guest room to search Gabriel’s duffel bag. This one proves to be more difficult to locate, till Jack thinks to look inside the shoes. He finds it folded small and stuffed into the toe of a battered training sneaker. He reads it, folds it together with the other paper, then goes to check on the unconscious boy. He’s pale and clammy, but he’s breathing normally. Good. Jack heads downstairs to check the boy’s guitar case.

 He hasn’t come this far, gotten this close to taking down Ogundimu to slip up now. While Gabriel is sleeping, he drives a short distance to a 24-hour copy shop. He has the documents copied, scanned, and loaded onto a thumbdrive, as well as sent to his personal email address. Then he contacts Captain Amari. Using and old duress code from their time in the Marines together, he tells her to meet him at home ASAP. She lets him know she’ll be there in an hour.

At home, he checks on Gabriel again and brews a pot of coffee. He sits sipping it and smoking while he organizes the copies of Ogundimu’s papers into different manila envelopes, each marked with a different address. The originals, he unfolds and slides carefully into plastic covers. As he is doing this, Ana arrives, looking sleepy and a little irritable.

“Jack, is that blood on your shirt?” she asks, as he hands her a cup of coffee. “Did the kid attack you?”

“Hm? Oh, no,” Jack says distractedly. “He bit his lip.”

Ana arches an eyebrow. “He bit his lip and wiped it on your shirt?”

“No—Ana, that doesn’t matter. Look. Look at these.”

He holds out the stack of plastic-sheathed papers to her. She takes them, sipping at her mug and eyeing the top one dubiously. As she scans through it, her expression changes. She sits down at the coffee table and reads each one carefully, with increasingly energetic interest.

“Hoooo, Jackie,” she breathes, looking up at him wide-eyed. “This is…this is big. Like, federal big. We’ll have to run these descriptions through missing persons, since there are no full names. And there’s no guarantee they’re all from this state. But…this stuff doesn’t implicate your dirty cops. I mean it strikes at the head, which is the most important part, but unless you want to risk them getting away with it, the kid has to talk.”

Jack crosses his arms and shakes his head thoughtfully, gazing at the floor.

“I don’t know if we need him to implicate the cops in any of this. All I need to get him to testify to is what happened outside the club when he was arrested. If we can get them on the bench for that, I’m betting they’ll be more than willing to implicate everyone they can, in order to save their own asses. I’m sure they know how popular cops are in prison.”

“Right, well, let’s hope so. Where’s the kid anyway?”

“Upstairs. He got pretty panicked and basically passed out.”

“Does he need an ambulance?”

“Come on, Ana,” Jack says crossly. “I know when someone needs medical attention. He’s not in shock, he just wore himself out with anxiety and exhaustion. You can check on him yourself, if it makes you feel better.”

Ana grins. She has been dying to get a look at he kid who has apparently melted her old partner’s heart.

“It would, thank you,” she says pertly. “Lead the way.”

Jack nods and they go quietly upstairs into his bedroom. Ana gazes at the sleeping boy for a moment or two, then sighs and shakes her head. They leave the room and go back downstairs silently, to avoid waking him.

“Oh, Jackie,” she says, once they are back in the kitchen. “I hope you know what you’re doing. That boy looks like a certified fucking heartbreaker.”

“I…don’t know what you mean,” Jack says, flushing crimson.

“I see,” Ana replies, with a knowing smile. “Well, I hope I get a chance to get to know him better. I’m going to take these to the prosecutor’s office first thing.” She picks up the envelope with the corresponding address. “Try to get some rest. And I’m putting a protective detail on you. People we know we can trust. You’re about to hit the big leagues, Jackie.”

Jack thanks her and walks her to the door, then returns to his work. The boy is still sleeping when the officers assigned to the detail arrive. Detective Wilhelm, a behemoth of a man (and the Captain’s husband), and his diminutive but quick-tongued and feisty partner Detective Oxton. They do a perimeter check, then Jack gives them mugs of coffee and they go to hang out in their vehicle, which is standard practice for these sort of details.

Gabriel wakes with the taste of iron and acid in his mouth. The taste of fear. Adrenaline shooting through him again. Panic clawing right back up his spine with searing talons.

_Jack knows!_

He flings himself off the bed. Scraping his knees before he scrambles to the closet. Ignoring everything until he finds his makeup kit. Callously dumping it, pawing through it in a frenzy until he can pry up the bottom. When it’s empty, he goes grey.

Jack. Jack took his defense. He took the paper! Fuckfuckfuck! He discards the box, not even bothering to check his duffle bag. He nearly trips down the stairs, stumbling into the basement door. He knows he left it open yesterday. Breaths coming in short, hard pants as he yanks it open. Nearly falling down the stairs as he crashes into his case. Snatching it up and finding his meticulous hidden stitches torn open inside the case. He wails when he sees those papers are gone too, digging his fingernails into his scalp.

Jack freshens up quickly and changes, then takes the original documents with him and stops to explain to the detectives that he’s headed to the bank and will be back in a half hour. When he returns, he finds Gabriel in the basement, frantically searching through his guitar case.

“Gabriel, they’re not there,” he says. “The papers are safe. You need to calm down.”

Gabriel comes up swinging with a half-feral snarl. “You _asshole_!”

He Lunges, throwing his weight at Jack with full intent to hurt him. Hurt him like he is hurting, raw and tender on the inside, something scraped out of him he’s not even sure he can recover from.

Strong singing voice nearly roaring, “I should fucking kill you before they do! They’ll know! They’ll know it was me!” He scrabbles for a handhold. For a grip. Maybe he just wants to tear Jack apart, see if he has the papers on him. A small part of him whimpers, curled up rocking back and forth. Begging daddy to make this okay. To make them okay again. He tries to smother it as his voice strains and cracks. “I need them! I need—where are they?!”

Jack catches the worn-out, distressed kid’s hands rather easily and restrains him by his wrists. Even on top of his game, Gabriel is no match for Jack, regardless of what dirty tricks he thinks he’ll use. Jack draws him in and clasps him tightly, pinning Gabriel’s arms to his sides.

“Your papers are safe, mijo.” He speaks soothingly, but firmly. “The originals are in a safety deposit box in my bank. Captain Amari has copies and she is on her way to the federal prosecutor as we speak.”

He presses his lips to the boy’s tear-streaked cheek and holds him fast as he trembles and struggles, but less violently than before.

“I’m going to die…” His shouts fade to plaintive whimpers. He can’t move. Jack’s tight embrace his his exhausted body pinned to his front. It’s…comforting. So much so, he gives up for now. Shuddery breaths and soft, damp whines. He starts to go slack, even though he still wants to run. To dig himself a hole somewhere and never come out. “They’re going to kill us both.”

He thinks that might bother him most. The thought of them killing Jack. The thought of Jack lying cold and dead somewhere when he’s so strong and warm. So warm. The heat of Jack’s body coaxes him to calm further. The heady, masculine scent of him, deep and rich. It works harder on his nerves the longer Jack refuses to let him go. He slowly noses back into Jack’s throat. Seeking reassurance from the older man. Feeling so fucked in the head. Everything is spiraling. He’s losing his safety nets, all his plans, and Jack just keeps…he keeps wrapping ropes around him. Softly and gently…but there.

Jack feels the boy start to give way. Start to melt into him, even if it’s against his will. He slides a hand up his back and into his curly hair, cradling his head securely, still holding him close. He can feel how much Gabriel needs to be held. His whole world is spinning and he needs something solid to hang onto. Lucky for him, there are not a lot of things more solid than a tough, old cop.

“You’re not going to die,” he says evenly. “They don’t have magic powers and they’re not omnipresent. They are just men, one of whom is in jail. There are far too many people between you and them now, for them to get to you. Ana Amari is a person I trust with my life. She has literally saved it, on more than one occasion. Her husband and his partner are outside acting as a security detail. And I’m here. I am not going anywhere, Gabriel. Not ever. Do you understand me?”

Gabriel’s breathing starts to slow. Blinking sluggishly as the panic gradually ebbs into bone-deep exhaustion. He can’t see, hear, or smell anything but Jack. Calloused hand on his scalp, tugging a little at his curls. His other arm still an iron band around his waist and limbs. He feels too heavy and too light at the same time and Jack’s got him tethered now. He exhales slowly.

“Okay, papi…” He’s more aware of the steady breathing of the detective. How calm his heart is. He latches onto that. “Okay…I’m—I’m sorry?”

Was that right? Does Jack want an apology? Fuck, he doesn’t want him to leave him alone, does he? Not today! Please not today.

Jack breathes more easily as Gabriel’s balance finally shifts. His whirling mind has caught on Jack and found something to cling to. He’s still holding him tightly, but the boy is practically shrink wrapped against him now. His soft, half-stammered apology nearly breaks Jack’s old heart. He gazes down into those big, glistening fawn-dark eyes.

Fuck. Just…fuck.

Jack is…he’s in love. He knows it’s true the moment the thought is born in his mind. He’s managed to find the hardest person in the world to even care about, and fall tits over ass in love.

“You don’t have anything to apologize for, mijo,” he says gently. “Come with me. I’m going to get you something to drink and eat and we’ll lie down for a while.”

Jack practically carries the tall, well-muscled boy up the basement stairs. He makes him drink a large glass of orange juice and eat half an empanada, which is all he can manage, and then he takes him upstairs. He’s not sure what to think of Gabriel’s passive state, but it doesn’t seem so gone and mindless this time. That’s a start.

Gabriel goes through the motions. Holding onto Jack the entire time. Practically sitting in his lap as he forces himself to eat. Clinging to his shirt as Jack coaxes him upstairs. He sheds the shirt he’d stolen from Jack’s drawer and crawls into the bed. Collapsing on it, curling his arms around one pillow. Biting anxiously at the fabric. Scared, and he doesn’t know of what, anymore. There’s still a mess of makeup on the floor. He should have—no, Jack won’t get mad over it. Over any of the fuck-ups he’s made. He can’t sit up. He stares at the bedding, hugging the pillow even tighter, sinking into the mattress like he’s trying to hide. Skin crawling from cold and unease.

“You can throw it away, papi…”

Jack doesn’t question it. He gathers the strewn makeup quickly and quietly and deposits the whole case in the bathroom garbage can. He ties the bag shut over it, just to get it out of the boy’s sight. He doesn’t think a kid like Gabriel had likely had the money for expensive cosmetics, and from what he’d said, he’s pretty sure where they came from.

Skin-to-skin contact seems like the best thing for Gabriel right now, so he strips down to his underwear and slides under the covers. Gabriel makes a little plaintive sound when Jack coils his arms around him, but it seems like it’s because he’s not holding tightly enough. Jack wraps one muscular leg over the boy’s long, lithe ones and presses him as close as he can without restricting his breathing.

“It’s going to be ok, mijo,” he says again, in a low hum. “Papi has you. He’s not going anywhere.”

Gabriel bites at his shoulder. Tentatively, just enough to get a mouthful of warm skin to muffle his soft whines. Hands clinging doggedly to Jack’s back as he holds him tight. The hard pressure of Jack’s embrace begins to roll him comfortably down to subdued submission, once again. Easing the panic and anxiety. The husky voice a rich rumble against his ear and under his palms. A low, crooning vibration in Jack’s shoulder.

 

 

Jack awakens several hours later to his phone vibrating on the nightstand. He rolls carefully away from Gabriel and sits up to answer.

“Hey Jackie,” Ana’s husky voice says through the little speaker. “Good news. Looks like the prosecutor’s office has been itching for a reason to hang onto Fabron. He’s being detained for further questioning.”

“Good. Excellent,” Jack rasps back, trying to sound more awake than he is. “What about Ogundimu?”

“Apparently, the shitbag is in Nigeria right now. He’ll be arrested the minute he sets foot on US soil, but to actually extradite him, the feds will need more than what we’ve got.”

“Think they can flip Fabron?”

“If they want Ogundimu bad enough, they will. But If they do, that means offering Fabron a plea. He might walk.”

Jack sighs and massages his brow. “That’s not justice. This system is so fucked.”

“Then get your boy to testify, Jack.”

“I can’t do that to him. He’s traumatized. He…he can barely talk, Ana.”

“I understand, Jackie. Well…maybe you can get something from him on the hookers. Two first names don’t help us much.”

“Yeah, maybe,” Jack says wearily. “I’ll keep you posted. And let me know what happens with Fabron.”

They hang up and Jack lies back down, pressing a kiss into the mess of black curls as he wraps the boy up in his arms again. He’ll figure something out. He has to.

 

While Jack slept, Gabriel had laid awake, thinking. He was always thinking now, it felt like. Fuck. He hated thinking.

He’s good at feigning sleep. Too used to it with Max. It was the only way he got peace sometimes. Pretending he was passed out after a bender. Apparently, Max had at least one limit. No, he’d rather see Gabriel’s face during. Awake and aware. Kept him from some situations where he might have ended up worse than he was now.

He’d heard the conversation this time. They wanted to know…something? They wanted him to talk? Seemed like, the way Jack spoke. He waits until Jack’s passed out, slowly levering himself to sit up. Then he reaches out to fish for Jack’s phone. It’s not theft if he plans to return it. Right…?

Maybe its time he paid Jack back, just a little. Ana. That was the Amari woman, right? He sneaks down the stairs and curls on the couch, arms around his knees. Unable to believe what he’s doing as he shakily redials the last number. Holding it to his ear and gnawing his lip hard enough to make it bleed again.

“Jack, is everything alright? What are you calling back for?” She’s got a smoky voice for a lady. That’s his first thought. She doesn’t sound like a pi—cop, either. He clears his throat and her tone turns almost biting hard. “Who are you and how did you get Detective Morrison’s phone?”

“Shit. Fu—uh.” He’s stuttering. All nerves. “Hi. Um, I’m—I’m Reyes. Uh. Gabriel. Jack’s—you sent cops here cause of me and Jack. Right?”

Her tone transforms again, instantly warm and motherly. “Oh, hello habibi! You’re Jack’s stray. What are you doing? Is everything alright?”

Her voice just…melts him and turns him to putty. He finds himself pouring out his whole story. And she listens. She listens to him.

Jack wakes instantly to full awareness. The kid isn’t there. He stumbles out of bed, reaching for his phone to check the time. It isn’t on the nightstand. He looks around for it on the floor. Did Gabriel…? No, what would he want with Jack’s phone. He shakes himself and goes to the stairs, pausing at the top when he hears a voice. It’s Gabriel. It sounds like he’s talking to someone, but there’s no other voice responding.

Jack pads down a few steps. The kid’s voice is low and husky, talking quickly and Jack can’t hear what he’s saying. He suddenly feels like a total prick. He has no right to eavesdrop anyway, even if he could hear him. He clears his throat and walks down the stairs, just in time to hear Gabriel saying goodbye. That’s his phone in the kid’s hand. Interesting.

“Hey,” he says cautiously. “How…how are you feeling?”

Gabriel fusses with the phone. “I called your cop friend.”

“You, uh…called Ana?” Jack asks incredulously.

He keeps his tone soft, though. No need to scare the kid off when he’s done something this major. He steps around to Gabriel’s side of the couch and sits near him, accepting the phone as the boy pushes it into his palm. He sets it on the couch without looking at it, still gazing at the beautiful, weary, tear-streaked face of the incredible young man who has exploded into his cold, grey life like a ball of blue fire.

“Did you…what did you talk about?”

“We…we talked about…” He inches slowly closer to Jack. “About Lily. And Annie and—and Roberta.” His voice chokes a bit. “Maria and Carolina and—”

There have been a lot of girls that never made it home. Or did, but with a part of their world stolen from them. Gabriel’s distrust of cops was not born of one incident, not even a handful of them. It was watching cops gleefully destroy people around him, in and out of uniform. It was Max and his insidious words. Maybe he’d just been looking in the wrong places?

Jack leans back and rests his arm on the back of the sofa behind Gabriel, not quite embracing him, but opening his body for the kid to come to him if he needs to. He doesn’t want to push him or scare him now.

“Did Ana tell you what we’re doing to make sure those men get what’s coming to them? You and your friends…we can’t ever give back what was stolen from you, but we can at least make sure you have justice. And we can make sure those men don’t hurt anyone anymore.”

His stomach turns to think of this bold, wild beauty chained and enslaved, forced into the most vile kind of servitude, and his spark snuffed out forever. Then he looks into the deep, dark wells of suffering in Gabriel’s eyes and sees something that pierces his heart. A flame. Faint and faraway, but shining like a tiny amber star in the inky black. His tenacious young soul, bruised and torn as it may be, still burns with that secret fire.

A tear rolls down his cheek and he turns his head away. “They can’t take you away, Gabriel. Not from me. Not ever.”

“She just…kept thanking me. Kept telling me that she knew I was scared, but because I was scared and talking to her about it, that…that I was doing good. That even punks need to trust someone sometimes. Anarchy with a cause. Shake up the world.”

He scrubs at his face. Turning into jack like a flower to the sun. Half crawling into his lap as he buries himself in his side. Hiding his face in his chest as his shoulders shake.

“I just…I don’t want them to get lost. They’re already lost. They didn’t ask for this…and Amélie. Fuck! Fuck, Amélie…Sombra!” He sits bolt upright, dives toward the phone only to stop. “Fuckfuckfuck I don’t know where they got stashed. Fuck!”

Sombra was a hacker, she loved to jailbreak his phones. Younger than all of them. Amélie was quiet, sad. She sang like angels and wore clothes like a diva and came at Akande’s beck and call.

“I know…some people. They’ve done some bad things. But. What if they had to?”

He’d seen widow, Amélie, put a knife in someone once. Some guy backstage. Sombra he’s sure Akande had stealing IDs and bank accounts. She was young and alone and vulnerable.

“Ok. It’s ok. Jack says, voice calm and steady. The name Amélie rings a bell, but the other, he’s never heard. “Your friends. Amélie and…Sombra? We can find them. I’ll need their full names and anything else you can tell me, but we will find them. I’ve been working Vice for a lot of years, Gabriel. I got a lot of scumbags in the right places who owe me favors. Our best bet, though, would be to shake it out of Fabron. The minute Ogundimu gets wind the heat is on him, he’s gonna start shutting down shop. We don’t want to wait around for that to happen.”

He chews his lip as if struggling with some kind of indecision, then looks closely into Gabriel’s face.

“Gabriel, do you think you could come to the precinct with me and tell the prosecutor what you told Ana? I’ll stay with you the entire time. It won’t be an interrogation. You’re a witness. You’re innocent. If you can do that, they can use your sworn statement to lean on Fabron and make him give up the girls. Then maybe we can get to them before Ogundimu’s thugs do.”

He doesn’t say what he’s thinking, which is that Ogundimu’s thugs are probably wearing blue uniforms and carrying badges. This is what makes it so urgent. Those dirty cops are sure to know that Fabron was arrested. If they haven’t figured out that he’s staying arrested this time, they will soon.

“What do you say, mijo? Could you do that? It might be our only chance to save your friends.”

_Fear and loyalty._

_Fear and loyalty…_

Gabriel twists against Jack, breath catching in his throat, but he thinks of Sombra. Who laughs so quickly and easily and looks up to him. How often he’s stepped between her and them and gotten a tight smile, and how often they trotted her out when he was ‘being too sulky its not cute any more Gabi baby.’ How often he’d found her curled with a bank of monitors, nearly bone pale and stressed with her hair lank and clothes rumpled. Coaxing her out for water and food even if only for a moment.

Amélie and her obsession with spiders. How he’d catch her watching pigeons as they winged away with something like longing. The smoky French that dripped out of her mouth when she thought they weren’t being watched. Teaching them the meticulous language with care, then refusing to speak at all for weeks. At her most dangerous when she was all dressed up with the grace of a dancer. Gabriel never figured out how she got tangled up with them.

He’s terrified. Shaking again, white-knuckle grip on Jack. “O—Okay. Okay. I…I need to save them, daddy. Just. Please. Please don’t leave me by myself.”

“I’ll never leave your sight,” Jack says, wrapping Gabriel up tightly in his arms. “Not for a minute.”

He kisses his forehead and holds him for a while, then they go to get dressed. Jack texts Detective Wilhelm and Ana regarding the situation. On their way out the door, he gives Gabriel his old jacket. It seems to help. They get into the back seat of Detective Oxton’s car and Gabriel nestles himself into Jack, not saying a word for the entire ride.

They enter the precinct behind the towering form of Detective Wilhelm, who acts as a sort of human shield so the kid won’t feel so exposed. No one tries to speak to them, and the eyes that are cast on them are friendly. Sympathetic and encouraging. Ana has her staff well-prepared.

Jack and Gabriel meet Gabrielle Adawe, the federal prosecutor, in Ana’s office. Jack sits silent beside Gabriel as the woman speaks to him, details his rights, explains the process thoroughly, and asks if he understands that he is about to give sworn testimony. The kid says yes, and then they begin.

She takes copious notes, letting the boy do the majority of the talking and only interrupting to clarify a few pertinent points. Gabriel seems to get more comfortable as time goes on, and after a while, his natural charisma begins to shine through. He even makes the serious woman laugh a couple of times. The process takes about two hours, during which time Ana brings them coffee twice.

“Thank you, Mr. Reyes,” Prosecutor Adawe says. “Your testimony is going to be incredibly helpful. Jack, we’ll get in touch with you if we have any further questions.”

Then Jack and Gabriel leave to allow Ana and the prosecutor confer. Jack takes Gabriel to his office to wait, so they won’t be out in the general bustle. He lights a cigarette and hands it to the boy.

“Gabriel, I—I can’t tell you how much you amazed me in there,” he says. He sits on the edge of his desk, then suddenly feels like an old guy in an after-school special trying to be ‘hip’ with the youth, and takes the chair next to Gabriel instead. “I know a lot of those things were really hard for you to talk about. I’m just…so proud of you.”

Gabriel had managed to not shake.

He was proud. Ana and Reinhardt and Jack being there…it had helped. Reinhardt was a beast of a man who should make him nervous, but his careful thunder rumble and the way he’d stepped up and between others and Gabriel had endeared the man to him. As much as being married to the whip-smart, smoke drawl of Ana, who’d brought him coffee and fleeting touches across his shoulders. Eyeing the prosecutor and even Jack before flashing Gabriel a one-eyed half grin before gliding away.

He was a bit in awe of her, really. Something about her screamed danger, but she didn’t make him feel unsafe. This entire place, actually, was not what he had expected. It didn’t make him feel like some filthy street punk with a hopped-up mouth and too much attitude. Like he didn’t matter. A piece of guttersnipe trash. He feels…safe here.

He’s shaking now though, gripping the cigarette tight in his teeth as he mutters softly, “I don’t want to die.”

He checks the blinds are down in the closed office before he twists to climb into Jack’s lap. If they’re seen, he’ll bluff it as platonic. Discarding his cigarette so he can bury his face in his shoulder because he wants the scent of Jack so much more than the taste of cigarettes. Wrapping his arms tightly around his neck.

“Are we gonna be safe? Are—are you gonna be safe?”

“You’re safe,” Jack breathes into Gabriel’s warm, soft curls, pressing him close and rocking him like a little child. “You’re safe here, mijo. We’re safe. We’re going to save your friends, too. All of this danger and terror you’ve been living in is going to end. I just…” his voice cracks with emotion and he has to clear his throat. “I just hope that when it’s all over, you won’t…leave.”

He takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly, palm sliding over the kid’s back. This is it. He can’t keep it buried, denying it to himself and hiding it from the kid any longer. He doesn’t bother trying to choose his words wisely. He opens his mouth and it just comes tumbling out.

“Don’t leave me, Gabriel. I…don’t think I can live without you anymore. I…I’m in love with you.”

Jack’s face flushes with heat, hating himself instantly for his awful timing, not to mention this horridly unromantic setting for making such a serious declaration. Maybe the kid won’t say anything. Maybe he’ll be kind enough to let the old man have his delusion for a little while longer.

Gabriel lets himself be coaxed, lets himself be softened and soothed in slow sways and warm hands. Hasn’t had anyone give a fuck in so long and he’s falling so rapidly into this. Drowning hungrily and happily, letting it wrap around his throat like a new sort of collar. Anything to keep Jack’s attention on him, his hands on him, keep him looking at him the way he does, like he matters. Like he’s precious.

The words only leash him all the tighter. Silk rope around his wrists in scarlets and golds as Jack ties them together without even damn-well trying.

He bites back a soft noise. Burying his face deeper in Jack’s neck. “You promise…you won’t make me leave?”

Not that Jack won’t leave, cause, well…he’s a cop. A detective. And the world is an awful and cruel place. But so long as Jack never gives him a bag and shows him the door, so long as Jack does not say Gabriel must leave…

He doesn’t say the exact words back, but Jack doesn’t notice. Those tit-for-tats don’t matter to him like they would have when he was younger. He’d said it simply because it’s true, not expecting some kind of exchange. He’s not exactly sure he even deserves to call this wild, beautiful boy is his own, but this…this is good. It’s all he needs.

“Make you?” Jack almost laughs at the absurdity of the idea. “Never. Never, mijo. I told you, my home is yours now. I don’t say things I don’t mean. I’d never send you away. But…I might tie you up if you get too sassy. We’ll see.”

Gabe laughs breathlessly. Thinks about convincing Jack to dress down and dress up. Thinks about sliding gloss over his lips and smoky wild makeup over the lids that cover piercing blue eyes. Thinks about dragging him to the best punk clubs and rock holes, climbing into his lap after he sings himself hoarse. Tasting the beer on his mouth and maybe even stealing his drink before going home.

Actually going home. A real home.

Where Jack can hold him down and fuck the wild right out of him. Draw him back down to earth. He’s not sure he’ll ever say the words back, but…

_But._

“Okay, papi. Then I don’t ever want to go anywhere else.”


	6. Epilogue

 

A TV flashes through channels.

It’s old, a bit battered, dusty for sure, but most people aren’t watching the TV in a place like this, anyway. It briefly pauses on a broadcast from some news outlet, where a clean-cut news anchor in a grey suit is speaking with a grave expression on his artificially tanned face.

“…convicted of at least fifty charges related to human trafficking, including kidnapping, commercial sexual exploitation, and forced labor. Ogundimu was sentenced today, to one-hundred and twelve years in prison, without the possibility of parole. Ogundimu’s sentencing comes on the heels of the connected conviction and sentencing of local businessman and musician Maximilien Fabron, who was involved in Ogundimu’s slavery trade.

The matter of most interest in the case locally has been the arrest by federal agents of several NYPD officers, on multiple charges, including accepting bribes, witness intimidation, and participating in organized crime across international borders. Spokesmen from the NYPD say that they are actively working with the FBI and international law-enforcement officials as more evidence comes to light, showing that the sex-trafficking ring has been operating for at least ten years and spans multiple countries.

Federal investigators are now looking into claims that Ogundimu inherited his position from his father, who began the criminal enterprise decades ago. Which, Linda, I have to say, that feels a little disgusting, doesn’t it?”

“You are absolutely right, Robert,” the female anchor says, with a saccharine smile. “All I inherited from my father was high blood pressure. But I know a lot of us will rest easier, knowing that the city is free of Akande Ogundimu and his henchmen. In other news—”

Her voice cuts out as the channel is flicked again. Then the screen goes dark, shutting off at the first, discordant twangs from the stage, as a band warms up. The few passing comments on the news story by club attendees flutter away and are lost in the general roar of chatter and laughter and waitresses shouting orders to the bartender over the noise.

Spotlights flare to life, gleaming down on the worn but well-loved stage at the other end of the venue. Another throbbing chord tears through the stifling air, and the crowd bursts into a deluge of cheers, before they’re drowned out by the rolling drum beat and the wailing guitars. Two voices rise above the instruments, one a man’s low, husky, growl and one a woman’s sharper drawl. The two roll together and come apart, harmonizing then competing, twining together and then snarling at each other as they collide.

The voices and the guitars belong to a woman with grey-streaked black hair and deep lines on her strong, symmetrical face, wearing a leather jacket and skirt; and a tall, dark-skinned young man with blue-tipped curls and matching blue fingernails. The woman swings her guitar out, kicking playfully at the man, who tosses her a smirk and kicks right back as they mock-brawl across the stage, tearing through set after set, to the elated roars of the tumultuous throng. Beer flows and smoke fills the air until it wreathes in lights above their heads like a halo, the crowd screaming for more, even as the performers collapse into an embrace, panting and laughing, with a deep bow to the audience, who shriek their joyous adoration.

The woman sits down on the edge of the stage to sign autographs and accept accolades like a benevolent queen keeping punk-rock court. The young man slinks off with a grin and a wave, ducking into the milling crowd and bobbing toward a dark corner near the bar. He flings himself at the figure skulking there with a roll of his big, brown eyes. Indignant, pouting, sprawled halfway over his companion’s lap.

“Come on, daddy, why the fuck you hiding when Lydia told me your ass used to sing with her?!”

“Ok, first of all, if Lydia calls what I did singing, she’s being far more than charitable,” Jack says, sliding his palm over Gabriel’s smooth, sweat-damp shoulder. “All I did was growl out some background noise for her to actually sing over. Second, I am not hiding. I’m just staying out of the way. I didn’t want to embarrass you by hanging around you looking like an old narc.”

Gabriel pouts harder. “You’d look less like a narc if you’d wear the eyeliner like I wanted. At least take off that stupid trench coat. You look like a cop.”

“I _am_ a cop,” Jack huffs, as the kid swats his hands away and starts to unbutton his coat. “I will be for another three weeks, anyway. No, baby…people will see the shirt.”

“They’re supposed to see. That’s why I made it for you.”

Gabriel’s pout dissolves into a wickedly gleeful smile, as he manages to wrest the coat from his resisting companion at last. He rakes his eyes over Jack’s muscular chest and trim waist, boldly displayed in the tight, black t-shirt, which bears the words “Gabriel’s Daddy” in huge, metallic-blue letters. Jack stands there feeling uncomfortably exposed, and flushes scarlet at an explosion of giggles from a nearby group of heavily made-up and lightly-clad young ladies.

“They probably think I’m your actual father, Gabe,” he says pleadingly. “This is so embarrassing.”

Gabriel pushes him back down onto the barstool and slings his long leg over to straddle his lap. Jack’s protest is muffled by glossy blue lips covering his, gasping softly into the kiss as Gabriel’s taut, round ass rocks lasciviously against his cock. Gabriel pulls away and flashes a triumphant grin over Jack’s shoulder at the young ladies, who, despite Jack’s misinterpretation of their giggles, have been ogling his old cop like a bunch of hungry jackals.

“They don’t think that now,” he says, hopping up and taking Jack by the hand. “Come on. You have to say hi to Lydia, or I’ll never forgive you.”

Jack surrenders, laughing at the absurdity of the situation as his irrepressible punk-rocker literally drags him toward the stage. This is what he signed up for, after all. He was the one who called her and arranged this little comeback show/celebration for Gabriel’s twenty-fifth birthday.

Gabriel doesn’t know yet, that this isn’t his only present. Jack has arranged a surprise for him, which he is anxious to get home and reveal. He does have three weeks till his official retirement, but on direct orders from Ana, he and Gabriel will be spending those weeks on vacation amid the warm sun and white sand and excellent cuisine of the Mediterranean.

A sweet, husky voice snaps him out of his reverie.

“Hey, Jackie,” Lydia says, catching her old friend and his young companion in one embrace. “It’s good to see you’ve still got a little punk in you, after all these years.”

“Oh, he does,” Gabriel says, with a sly wink. “And I’ve got a _lot_ of old cop in me, let me tell you.”

“Jesus Christ,” Jack sighs. “He’s like this all the time, Lydia. Were we this shameless when we were young?”

“ _Were_? Speak for yourself, Jackie. I’m still young,” Lydia grins. “And you’re still shameless. Nice t-shirt.”

“Thanks.” Jack gestures toward Gabriel, who has climbed onstage to chat with his bandmates and help pack up their equipment. “He made it.”

“Talented kid,” she smiles. “Smart as a whip, too. I like him.”

“So do I,” Jack says, gazing wistfully across the stage at the energetic young people. “I hope he doesn’t get bored of me too fast. I’ve kind of…gotten used to having him around.”

“Well, he’s not as wild and restless as he likes to pretend. He likes being domestic with you just as much as he likes his music and parties. Probably more.”

Jack looks at her, surprised. “You think so?”

“I know so,” she says, patting his shoulder affectionately. “If you take good care of him, he’ll take good care of you. And uh…let me know when you pop the question, huh? Cause I’m definitely playing at your wedding.”

“I—the, uh…oh. Ok. I—I will,” Jack sputters, as she strolls away to talk with some politely waiting fans. “Thanks, Lydia!”

Just then, Gabriel comes bouncing back and flings his arms around Jack’s neck. “Thanks Lydia for what? For being amazing and playing for my birthday? Cause she deserves it. Amélie and Sombra say they wish she was their mom. Well, Sombra said it. Amélie just nodded it.”

“Yeah, she’s pretty amazing,” Jack smiles, carding his fingers through the silky, blue and black curls. “Happy birthday, mijo.”

“Thanks, old man! I hope you don’t think this means you don’t have to give me a present, though. I still want presents.”

“So fucking spoiled,” Jack laughs. “I should spank you more.”

“You should!” Gabriel says, big brown eyes lighting up. “I still haven’t had my birthday spankings!”

They exchange waves goodbye with Lydia as they pass, and Gabriel pauses to sling his guitar case over his shoulder. Then he takes hold of Jack’s hand again and pulls him impatiently toward the backstage door.

“Come on, papi. Let’s go home.”

 

 

 

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Petal Red, Petal Gold](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16292645) by [tinyfiestyrosiekitten](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tinyfiestyrosiekitten/pseuds/tinyfiestyrosiekitten)




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